Gay Guide to Sitges
Sitges was a refuge before it was a gay town. Santiago Rusiñol arrived in 1891, built Cau Ferrat as a house and studio, and turned the place into the center of Catalan modernisme, giving it a bohemian reputation that long outlasted the painters. That reputation is precisely why it worked later: Franco's 1970 Law on Dangerousness and Social Rehabilitation sent gay men to prison and to camps, and Sitges sat far enough from the Barcelona courts to be less watched, so a discreet gay life could survive here when it could not survive in most of Spain. Decriminalization came in 1979, and in 2005 Spain became the third country in the world to open marriage.
The whole scene fits inside a five-minute walk, which is most of the appeal. Carrer de Joan Tarrida is the densest stretch, running El Horno, Man Bar, La Villa, XXL, Industry, CoX, the Runway terrace and the Parrots hotel almost door to door. Carrer de Sant Bonaventura adds the Eagle, El Piano and Comodín, and Plaça de la Indústria holds Parrots Pub and Central. Carrer Primer de Maig, dropping down to the seafront, has been called Calle del Pecado since the 1970s and has earned it.
The beaches are the other half. Bassa Rodona sits right on the promenade in town and is the gay beach proper, busy and sociable rather than secluded. Platja de l'Home Mort, the Dead Man's Beach, is the nude and cruising one, a coastal walk east past Terramar and far enough out to feel like a decision.
Carnival in February is enormous, genuinely wild and unmistakably queer in character. Sitges Pride takes June, and Bears Week fills the first half of September and effectively books out the town.
Sitges is forty minutes by train from Barcelona, which is how most people arrive intending a day trip and end up staying the week.