LGBT history in Spain
This is a list of notable events in the history of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights that took place in Spain. 17th century. No known information. 18th century. No known information. 19th century. The turning point of this trend was marked by the Enlightenment movement, during which individual freedoms began to be recognized and concluded with the elimination of the “crime of sodomy” from the Spanish Criminal Code in 1822. 20th century. Franco era. Homosexuality was highly illegal under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, with laws against homosexual activity vigorously enforced and homosexual people  being imprisoned in large numbers. The 1954 reform of the 1933 "Ley de vagos y maleantes" ("Vagrancy Act") declared homosexuality illegal, equating it with procuring. The text of the law declares that the measures in it "are not proper punishments, but mere security measures, set with a doubly preventive end, with the purpose of collective guarantee and the aspiration of correcting those subjects fallen to the lowest levels of morality. This law is not intended to punish, but to correct and reform". However, the way the law was applied was clearly punitive and arbitrary: police would often use the Vagrancy  laws against suspected political dissenters, using their homosexuality as a way to go around the judicial guarantees. The law was repealed in 1979. However, in other cases the harassment of gay, lesbian and transgender people was clearly directed at their sexual mores, and homosexuals (mostly males) were sent to special prisons called "galerías de invertidos" ("galleries of deviants"). This was a common practice until 1975, when Franco's regime gave way to the current constitutional democracy, but in the early 70s gay prisoners were overlooked by political activism in favour of more "traditional" political dissenters. Some gay activists deplore the  fact that, even today, reparations have not been made. However, in the 1960s clandestine gay scenes began to emerge in Spain. Further establishments would start to appear in Barcelona, an especially tolerant city under Franco's regime, and in the countercultural centers of Ibiza and Sitges (a town in the province of Barcelona, Catalonia, that remains a highly popular gay tourist destination). Attitudes in greater Spain began to change with the return to democracy after Franco's death through a cultural movement known as La movida. This movement, along with growth of the gay rights movement in the rest of  Europe and the Western world was a large factor in making Spain today one of Europe's most socially tolerant people.