Gay Guide to Torremolinos
Spain's gay nightlife started here, in an alley. Venues began opening in Pasaje Begoña in late 1962, the first bars in the country where gay people could gather openly, and they did it under a dictatorship where same-sex relations carried a prison sentence. Franco's 1970 Law on Social Danger set it at three years.
One night in June 1971 the police came. They raided the passage and the streets around it, identified hundreds of people, arrested more than a hundred, many of them foreign tourists, and shut down businesses along the alley. The scene scattered and the town's tourism went with it.
Spain has since decided that alley matters. The Congress of Deputies and the Parliament of Andalusia have both recognized Pasaje Begoña as a site of historical memory and the birthplace of LGBTQ+ freedoms in Spain. In 2019 it was formally twinned with the Stonewall Inn in New York. A 2.2 million euro restoration is underway, with a European LGBTQ+ memory center planned.
The scene never left, it just moved a few metres and got louder. La Nogalera, the concrete plaza the passage runs off, is now the densest concentration of gay bars, clubs and businesses on the Costa del Sol, and it runs late into the night through the summer.
Torremolinos Pride spans late May into early June, with the march itself closing the week. It is the largest on this coast and the town does not treat it as a sideline.