Essay prompt: Urban uniqueness & branding: Despite claims that many urban environments are converging with others around the world (i.e., becoming more homogeneous), there is a variety of cities exhibiting an especially strong sense of ‘self’. These cities insist on their uniqueness, and may even try to brand their specific urban self-identity. Critically explore how one city has either explicitly claimed its uniqueness in relation to one of these wider trends in transformation that we have examined, or simply is obviously in a very atypical social/economic situation yet also must engage in some way with these processes of development. (e.g., Montréal or Miami as uniquely bilingual/bicultural, Tirana as uniquely on the edge of geopolitical worlds, Portland as uniquely green, etc; or Havana or Caracas as being in an unusual developmental situation due to their national politics and their economic models, etc.

Introduction 

At the moment of writing in the early 2020s, it is no longer considered a novelty for major Western nations to have urban capitals that are friendly toward the gay community and offer spaces where they can congregate safely and publicly. Nevertheless, it once was, and the nations/states/cities that were the early adopters not only stand out, their ideologies became associated with gay visibility. With the introduction of any new idea or product, there is a bell curve of integration: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards (Rogers,1962). Of these categories, early adopters have the highest degree of opinion leadership, meaning they affect the perception of the idea or product. In the latter half of the 20th century, the cities that hosted their LGBTQ community comfortably (a relative term, of course) were typically in nations associated with liberal democracy: the United States (Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York), United Kingdom (London), France (Paris). Even if these cities and nations didn’t have legislation in place that protected or allowed gay couples to marry until the mid-2010s, the visible presence and cultural impact of the LGBTQ community in the late 20th century was enough to tie gay-friendliness to the liberal democratic package. 

Following Franco’s death in 1975, the Spanish capital of Madrid underwent a rapid transition to becoming a liberal democracy. As a consequence of the elections during the Spanish Transition, the substantially more liberal politicians’ openness to the gay community in the ensuing decades could be seen as largely motivated by the associations that acceptance of the LGBTQ community would bring to the city. By exhibiting the contemporaneous values of older, more “established” liberal democracies, Madrid hoped to be counted among them. 

According to Kavaritzis and Ashworth (2005), to whom the popular understanding (among academics, if not practicing professionals) of city/place branding is attributed, branding is defined as “the forging of associations” (508). In the aftermath of Franco’s death, the creation of a tolerant cultural environment for the LGBTQ community and a positive legislative landscape was one way Madrid forged liberal democratic associations in order to change the perception of the city so that it could become an internationally relevant destination. “The transformations of old and new metropolises, and their power to codify bodies and their circulation across nations, shape the new inscriptions and perceptions of gay identity” (Giorgi, 2002: 73). 

With this in mind, this paper takes the critical stance that the relationship Madrid has with its LGBTQ community is primarily based on branding rather than tacit acceptance, and that one cannot separate Madrid’s desire to become a relevant liberal democratic player on the world stage from its attitudes toward its LGBTQ community. Utilizing the conversations around Kavaratzis and Ashworth’s (2005) framework of place branding as a lens, this paper reviews actions, reactions, collaborative efforts and tensions between the city as a political body and its LGBTQ community. The unique products of this relationship, specifically the gayborhood of Chueca and Madrid’s annual Pride event—one of the biggest in Europe—reveal dynamics of the relationship lived out in real-time. Primarily, the goal of the city to become a destination for international dollars (euros, pounds, etc.) is reflected in an increasingly globalized and gentrified experience for the gay community. The LGBTQ contribution to Madrid’s perception alteration has been productive for the city, both in terms of tourism and ideological alignment with other liberal democratic destinations. Gay tourists and gay locals contribute to each other’s political and social knowledge, and the annual Pride celebrations and demonstrations offer a globally-linking experience. But in a concurrent pattern seen elsewhere in the world, the late 2010s and early 2020s have witnessed more conservative sentiments taking hold of the city (and its legislative body), changing the terms of the unspoken branding agreement between the LGBTQ community and city governance. 

Historical context: cultural rewiring and legal expansiveness

Madrid perhaps would not have been an obvious choice for what would become one of Europe’s gay capitals. Its transition from an authoritarian, highly-catholic, traditionalist context under the Franco regime to a thriving LGBTQ hotspot with a dedicated and internationally-renowned gayborhood was the work of only a couple of decades. After Franco, the major cities in Spain were considering how to move forward. While the much-referred to ‘Barcelona Model’ prioritized planning and design cues for its urban regeneration, it also emphasized a cultural rehabilitation element in order to “remain competitive in the international context whilst simultaneously ensuring social justice at home” (Degen and Garcia, 2012: 1023). Madrid’s reconception depended largely on the cultural category as well, and is usually cited as beginning with La Movida Madrileña [The Madrid Movement]. 

La Movida Madrileña is largely credited with jumpstarting the city’s shift in energy after five tense and hesitant in the years following Franco’s death in 1975. A free punk concert in 1980 that featured songs that were “insolent, anti-romantic, aggressively secular…about anarchy in the kingdom” (Phelan, 2020) was the opening move in a dramatic shift in the mood of Madrid. From there, sentiments such as the prioritization of sexual liberation, freedom and rights entered the cultural foreground, affecting design, fashion, film and family structures (Martinez and Dodge, 2010: 231). This movement also had political backing from Madrid City Hall. With newly elected politicians striving to construct a democracy in the aftermath of a fascist regime, “Madrid’s official cultural politics exhibited a desire to become an international urban center; the movida reflected that desire” (Giorgi, 2002: 76). At the time, the socialist mayor of Madrid, Enrique Tierno Galvan, had permissively open cultural policies, such as subsidizing underground art to fuel the flames of changing sentiment in the city (Phelan, 2020). “Bendito sea el caos, porque es síntoma de libertad” [Bless the chaos, because it is a sign of liberty] is one of his more famous quotes (Martiarena, 2018). Like many other cultural movements of the 20th century, the gay community played an emblematic role. “La primera gran liberacion la producen los homosexuales” [The first great liberation is produced by homosexuals] (José Luis Gallero, 1991). The movement took especially firm root in barrios like Chueca, which was transitioning from a neighborhood associated with drug dealing and prostitution to one where the young, the artistic, and the queer were settling (Neuvel, 2017). It therefore became an epicenter of advocation for LGBTQ equalities and issues, homosexuality having only been decriminalized in 1979, just one year after the ratification of the new Spanish Constitution.  

In 1978, Spaniards voted decisively for a liberal democratic constitution that would formalize the end of the Franco era (Kassimeris, 2018). The Spanish Constitution doesn’t define what family is, nor does it define marriage as the union of man and woman, but rather: “Man and woman have the right to get married with total legal equality” (Art. 32.1, Constitución Española). “Even though the Catholic Church plays an important role in the idea of procreation as essential for marriage, this ideal is completely eliminated in the legal spectrum of the Spanish judicial system” (Martinez & Dodge, 2010: 235). Rather, more essential to the arrangement of marriage is the concept of “affection,” regardless of gender, with Madrid being one of three cities in Spain to explicitly state that this affection is crucial for marriage (Valencia and the Canary Islands being the others) (233). This more expansive definition of marriage has set the standard for many Spanish laws to be embracing of more alternative ideas of family and marriage than a traditionally Catholic definition might make room for. Indeed, Spain became the third country in the world to legalize gay marriage in 2005. It’s this legislative earliness in gay rights coming so quickly after a fascist landscape and its subsequent adoption into the city’s branding strategy that makes Madrid a unique case in the liberal democratic West. 

Conversations around place branding 

Advancing the visibility of the LGBTQ community is a move we see other places enacting in order to rework their image and register among the global community. In Oswin’s (2014) article ‘Queer times in global city Singapore: Neoliberal futures and the ‘freedom to love,’ we see those same sentiments echoed. The opening sentence in the abstract reads: “In the Southeast Asian city-state of Singapore, efforts to shake off an authoritarian image and foster a creative economy have led to significant changes in sexual citizenship since the early 2000s” (Oswin, 2014: 412). The way the LGBTQ community is conceptually embedded as part of the liberal democratic image makes elevating its visibility in order to pave over an authoritarian reputation a place branding strategy that travels. However, at the time of Oswin’s (2014) writing, Singapore had not endeavored to make meaningful policy adjustments for its gay population, to much critique. Madrid’s originality, even in the West, resided in the earliness with which it improved its legislative relationship with the LGBTQ community. 

The operative definition of place branding comes from Kavartzis and Ashworth’s (2005) article ‘City Branding: an Effective Assertion of Identity or a Transitory Marketing Trick?’ In it, they say: “Place branding centers on people’s perceptions and images and puts them at the heart of orchestrated activities, designed to shape the place and its future” (507). It is this thought about designing the place and its future that informs most of the thinking in this paper, for it was very much with the future in mind that newly elected politicians in Madrid’s post-Franco era put effort into reconceptualizing their city for its residents, but also for the rest of the liberal democratic world. The article introduces consumer orientation in a place branding context: “consumer orientation would have to be how the residents encounter the city they live in, how they make sense of it, which physical, symbolic or other elements they evaluate in order to make their assessment of the city” (ibid.). Based on the evidence gathered in the process of researching Madrid’s relationship with its LGBTQ community, I would counter that ‘consumer orientation’ in a place branding context is not limited to only the residents. The way a city like Madrid prioritized international tourism means they put a significant amount of effort into perception management targeting consumers (read: travelers) in other liberal democratic states and nations. This places the consumer of their perception efforts beyond their residents and beyond the city’s borders. As one example: “In 1996 the Spanish Tourism Institute, (the official tourism office, published a gay guidebook titled 'Gay Spain: Feel the Passion,’ to be distributed, apparently, in Spanish information offices in the United States” (Giorgi, 2002: 62).

Kavartzis and Ashworth raise an important question about whether city branding can establish the experience of dealing with one entity, a cohesive whole for the people who are encountering that place (2005: 512). Undeniably, the city has multiple stakeholders, and the presence and promotion of the LGBTQ community is not targeting all of them. In Hospers’ (2019) reflective article looking back on Kavartzis and Ashworth (2005) 15 years on, he raises the point that “cities are simply too complex in terms of target groups, offerings and associations they evoke that sub-brands might be useful when branding them” (Hospers, 2019: 20). The reader should look at Madrid’s relationship with its LGBTQ communities as an example of one of these ‘sub-brands,’ one that was unique in the context of other liberal democratic cities and states at the time. Kavartzis and Ashworth (2005) go on to cite De Chernatony & Dall’Olmo Riley (1998) saying that yes, specific branding efforts can contribute to a cohesive whole “as long as the values that are developed as the core of the brand are bound together by a vision which gives them meaning, impetus and direction” (512). If we understand this vision as Madrid’s desire for liberal democratic associations, then the intentional promotion of this LGBTQ ‘sub-brand’ in the city makes sense in the grand scheme of that vision.

Chueca and gay tourism: the products validating Madrid’s branding efforts

With Madrid focused on achieving the contemporaneousness associated with being a city of liberal democratic values, the visibility and presence of gay culture in the city becomes a commodity in of itself. “Spain—surrounded by superlatives—moves ahead on a global map of advances toward progressiveness. In this map, the ‘flowering of gay life’ is perceived as evidence of historical progress; through the eyes of a gay tourist, Spain proves to be, finally, contemporary” (Giorgi, 2002, 57). 

The core of Madrid’s LGBTQ population and—the center of these international-democratic branding efforts—is in the neighborhood of Chueca. “Chueca is the most influential LGBTQ community in Spain and the only one with a fixed physical and social structure” (Martinez and Dodge, 2010: 227). In other Spanish cities that are considered gay-friendly (like Barcelona), there are resources and spaces for the LGBTQ community. However, they are scattered throughout the city instead of bound to a specific space that has been carved out for a gay audience/consumer base (ibid.). The city of Madrid acknowledges Chueca’s population in the form of physical infrastructure, with inclusions like crossing signs featuring two ‘male’ icons holding hands as they walk (safely) across the road (238). Chueca is offered up for the tourist gaze, being both centrally located in the city and a space of highly and purposefully visible gayness. Through Chueca, Madrid can pose for the world, showcasing its successful globalization and alignment with other liberal democracies. It does so by spotlighting its physical commitment to gay spaces and those spaces’ subsequent commitment to commercialization. 

It should not be overlooked that “visible gayness” is culturally hegemonic, and intertwined with the globalization experience at the turn of the century; this, too, is part of the Chueca story. “There has been a great move toward the globalization of ‘gay identity.’ In modernity, identities inevitably become global. Indeed, few things remain local in the aftermath of the rise of capitalism. (Grewal & Kaplan, 2001, cited by Martinez & Dodge, 2010: 237). In what Massad (2002) terms ‘The Gay International,’ discourse of gay rights is largely Western, white, male, and reproductive of its own categories. Therefore it is not surprising that the ones who fared the best through Chueca’s rise to commercial prominence were the gay men. In addition to (and sometimes inseparable from) the political ideologies of liberal democracy, Madrid’s global ambitions were tied into the capital-centric philosophies of turn-of-the-century globalization. As a result, Chueca enjoys mainstream business attention, with global chains like Burger King flying pride flags by their front door (ibid). “The citizens of Chueca have assimilated the ideology of capitalist modernization, leading to the globalization of their community (Martinez & Dodge, 2010: 239).” By hitching its wagon to the commercial ideals of 90s–00s globalization, Chueca flourished economically. But this has led to the predictable result of gentrification and price-based exclusion, “Hence, creating two classes of gay citizens in Chueca—the low-income students who are not able to afford the nice restaurants or enter the nice bars and the older gay men with a more stable income and able to afford the commodities offered by the community” (Martinez & Dodge, 2010: 238). And it is precisely these purchasable parts of Chueca—the bars and restaurants and clubs (many of which are international and named in English)—that gay tourists come to take part in and connect with the existing gay community, exclusive as it might have become.  

When tourists come to Chueca, they are a part of its arithmetic: they take, and they give. Their presence is arguably part of the formula for Chueca’s gentrification, but they also contribute further to the space by bringing comparative knowledge of other lived gay experiences and places:

Through tourism, there is a constant movement of individuals and they bring new international ideologies and perspectives such as the role of government, economic perspectives, the role of church, and the global LGBTQ movement. For instance, tourism can fuel social political movements to effect change (Martinez & Dodge, 2010: 242).

Tourists and locals blend together in Chueca and contribute to each other’s knowledge (political, social and otherwise). This reveals a mutual value-add in the exchange. For tourists who don’t come from a place with a physically established LGBTQ space, “the new openness offers conditions and sites to experience gay identity and desire” (Giorgi, 2002: 60). And for tourists who do, they can compare notes with locals as they overlap in mutual experiences in the aforementioned bars, restaurants, clubs, and events. And of course, the biggest LGBTQ gathering that occurs each year is Madrid’s Pride.

Pride 

Beginning in 1977, one of the most notable parts of Madrid’s LGBTQ branding efforts is the annual Pride celebration, MADO (Madrid Orgullo). It has become one of Europe’s largest, with roughly 1–2 million people participating most years during a roughly 10-day experience (Madrid Orgullo, 2017). After hosting the 2007 EuroPride, two years after Spain legalized gay marriage, Madrid was elected to host the biannual WorldPride (in a process similar to how the Olympics decide which cities will host next) for 2017. The events, which take place mainly in Chueca, include the partying, levity and commercialism which have become tonally emblematic of many pride events. But MADO makes an effort to retain and centralize demonstration as part of the pride experience as well. For example, in 2021, the demonstrations of a toned-down MADO event (due to COVID-19) centered around a recently approved drafted bill that would support trans peoples’ right to “choose their gender without medical reports or hormone therapy” (Saldaña, 2021). In 2017, the Madrid Summit, which took place concurrently during the week of WorldPride, featured "More than 140 speakers from five continents — LGBTQ activists, politicians, writers, etc. — [who were] in Madrid to analyze the situation of LGBTQ rights around the world” (Allen, 2017). 

The monumental pride events serve as beacons for the LGBTQ community in Europe, and indeed around the world, which peaked with Madrid/Chueca being the host and epicenter of WorldPride 2017. But, undeniably, it’s also a money maker. The 2017 WorldPride event brought in 115 million euros over the course of the week, roughly 15% more than what previous pride events netted (Peiro, 2017). The pride events have household name sponsors, like Coca-Cola and HBO (Madrid Orgullo, 2017). So with an approximate 100 million euros scheduled to come into the city every summer, a definite commercial component motivates the city to collaborate with local LGBTQ organizations to keep Madrid Orgullo running. Madrid’s City Hall typically supports the events with promotional material, including videos paid for by La Oficina de Turismo del Ayuntamiento de Madrid [The Office of Tourism for Madrid City Hall]; contributing funds as a patron of the activities (60,000 euros in years previous, 250,000 euros in 2016, and an intended 750,000 euros for the WorldPride of 2017) (Rivas, 2017); with logistical organization as the pride event takes to the streets and some of the most major public spaces in the city, like Puerta del Sol; and with maintenance and street cleaning after the events. 

What is perhaps revealing is that after being canceled entirely in 2020 due to COVID, the 2021 MADO was the first year Madrid City Hall did not facilitate the event, although several politicians were still in attendance (Saldaña, 2021). It was also the first year with a mandated registration cap of 25,000: a fraction of the typical 1–2 million attendees the city has come to expect over the previous years (ibid.). Of course, there may have been other motivations for the city not to engage, like the bad optics of encouraging a large gathering during a pandemic and the increasing influence of far-right conservative politics on Madrid’s legislative body.

An unstable brand: changing politics, changing product.

Co-branding of a product and a place, defined by Kavartzis and Ashworth (2005: 511) “attempts to market a physical product by associating it with a place that is assumed to have attributes beneficial to the image of the product.” If we stretch the definition of this and think of Madrid’s physical gay spaces in Chueca and its renowned Pride events as the product, then the nature of them being in Madrid proves benefic now that Madrid’s reputation of LGBTQ friendliness has been established. But, as Kavartzis and Ashworth go on to say, “[Co-branding] is an inherently dangerous practice if only because place images are both multifaceted and unstable” (512). Place perceptions shift. More importantly, place perceptions can shift on purpose as those ‘in charge’ of the city’s brand begin to impose new goals for what they want their residents or the rest of the world (the ‘consumers’) to understand about Madrid. It may even begin targeting new consumers altogether. 

One of Hospers (2019) critiques of Kavartzis and Ashworth (2005) is that they do not pay sufficient attention to the impact of public policy on place branding, although he caveats that Kavartzis addresses it in a later publication (see Kavaratzis, 2012). “Being part of urban policy also means that branding is subject to all the complex, dynamic and uncontrollable aspects surrounding public policy…the need for a long-term strategy, stability and continuity…can be threatened” (Hospers, 2019: 20). If we look to the political sequence of events from 2019–2021 we see this playing out in real-time. Madrid’s city government has trended more conservative in recent years, with conservative parties (including the far-right party, Vox) gaining seats and influence in the government (Carreño, 2019; León, 2019; Dugarte and Rama, 2021; Saldaña 2021). During 2019 campaigns for local, regional, and EU elections, Vox candidates advocated for the displacement of Pride events to Madrid’s outer suburbs, revoking funding for clean up after the parades, and curtailing LGBTQ education in schools, among other actions (Carreño, 2019). In 2021, conservative politician and President of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, doubled her party’s representation (the Popular Party, PP moving forward) in Madrid’s regional elections but failed to net the majority. The conservative majority is only provided if the PP is counted in tandem with Vox. This offers Vox leverage over the PP, which, given their authoritarian and socially conservative pledges, makes them unlikely only to ask for trivialities of the PP (Turnbull Dugarte and Rama, 2021). 

In one example of their influence on optics, pressure from Vox got the rainbow pride flag that had hung from the center of Madrid’s City Hall during Pride week since 2015 moved to the side of the building and shortened (León, 2019). Via social media, Vox sent a message to the PP mayor of Madrid that “‘[the Spanish flag], which belongs to everyone shows that Madrid respects the rights of everyone, whatever their sexual orientation, [instead of] the flag of a lobby who hates anyone who doesn’t think like they do’” (ibid.). 

This literal reduction in LGBTQ visibility warns of the potentiality for divorcing LGBTQ culture from Madrid’s brand depending on how much sway this increasingly conservative face of Madrid’s politics garners. While Madrid has experienced conservative leadership for many years, there was a consensus among both sides of the political spectrum that LGBTQ rights were common ground issues, with members of the conservative PP approving bills that protected LGBTQ rights and even having a few openly gay members among their ranks. But as the head of the Observatory for anti-LGBTQphobia in Madrid states, “‘Vox has broken that consensus’” (Carreño 2019). If Chueca and Pride are part of Madrid’s ‘products,’ what do they become if Madrid loses its association with gay-friendliness due to contemporary politics?

Conclusion 

The rapidity with which Madrid transformed from a post-Franco, fascist, and highly-Catholic urban culture to one of the leading (and legislatively) LGBTQ-friendly cities in Europe is pretty singular. But looked at in a critical light, the motivation for Madrid to adopt such a stance toward the LGBTQ community could be seen as revolving largely around desires to change the city’s image and perception in the eyes of the international community. Thus, this paper looks at the relationship between the city and its LGBTQ community as one based on branding. And as the city’s legislature becomes increasingly conservative, their relationship to the LGBTQ community is changing. Instead of highlighting them as a unique part of the city’s character and culture, the far-right voices advocate for revoking the exceptionalism of LGBTQ visibility that lent to the Madrid brand. They disavow distinguishing the gay community from the general population (in the example of replacing the gay pride flag with the Spanish flag), and recommend physically decentralizing them by calling for the displacement of Pride to the city's outskirts, which could limit accessibility and participation, and of course, visibility. 

In the conclusion of Anttiroiko’s (2014) book ‘The Political Economy of City Branding,’ he references The Economist Intelligence Unit’s 2012 benchmarking study of cities. In this ranking, we find Madrid listed in the top ten cities in the world for Social and Cultural Character (Anttiroiko, 2014: 165). As established earlier, while the vibrancy of the LGBTQ community is only one sub-brand in Madrid’s original overarching vision of liberal democratic aspiration, it is a powerful sub-brand that has garnered the city attention, international rankings, and revenue. It has gone a long way toward validating the city’s self-perception as a liberal democracy. If the political situation disrupts this, it isn’t that Madrid doesn’t have other cultural or social characteristics to call upon, but it stands to lose a large part of what distinguished the city and put it on the map (literally, for many LGBTQ tourists, as seen in Giorgi, 2002). To echo the question posed by Hospers (2019), “How to guarantee that a city branding strategy ‘survives’ the political changes to which local elections might lead?” (Hospers, 2019: 21).

The legal rights of the LGBTQ community in Madrid don’t exist in the same state of precarity depicted in Oswin’s (2014) detailing of Singapore. However, a far-right party in a position of influence voicing these opinions to a politically vulnerable center-right party in a position of leadership. One can’t be blamed for being wary of a slide backwards toward an attitude expressed by Singapore’s Prime Minister: “‘There is space, and there are limits’” (Owsin, 2014: 413). Part of Madrid’s uniqueness is due to how quickly it went from being unsupportive of the LGBTQ community to spotlighting it. But it would be naive to believe this is a sequence of events immune to reversal; progress isn’t linear and progressiveness isn’t a given. Getting into this research, I didn’t want to be so cynical as to say that Madrid’s acceptance of its LGBTQ community was tacit upon what it could do for its brand. But reviewing the changes in attitude as the far-right party Vox increases its influence, it seems like that might very well be the case. Like all entities with a marketing strategy, the brand evolves. Forty years on, Madrid is no longer trying to prove to the world that it is a city worth coming to. It has established that with the support, presence, and relevance of the LGBTQ community. And now that the goal has been accomplished, it seems like the brand strategy is shifting. If the influence of Madrid’s far-right conservative legislature continues to grow, it may start trying to prove very different things about Madrid to the world, things that don’t involve (or worse, actively detriment) the LGBTQ community that helped raise the city’s profile to the status it presently enjoys in the eyes of the liberal democratic world. Then again, the city may no longer feel a need to prove allegiance or alignment with the liberal democratic world.

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Visit Madrid (2019). “Tú me acostumbraste” Vídeo oficial Orgullo Madrid 2019 [“You get accustomed to me” official video of Madrid Pride 2019]. [online] www.youtube.com. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0BTro7kmx0 [Accessed 23 Jan. 2022].