- A conversation between the bookseller Leticia Cienfuegos-Jovellanos and the booktuber Juan Naranjo reopens the debate.
- The discussion contrasts the risk of pigeonholing works with the need to make previously hidden stories visible.
- The LGTBI titles registered by Berkana between 2016 and 2024 do not reach 1% of Spanish editorial production.
LGTBI literature returns to the center of the Spanish cultural debate this September 3rd. A public conversation between the bookseller Leticia Cienfuegos-Jovellanos and the booktuber Juan Naranjo faces two legitimate needs: to avoid reductive categories and to facilitate queer readers finding stories that remained invisible for decades.
A respectful and useful controversy
The starting point was a video by Leticia Cienfuegos-Jovellanos, a bookseller and content creator, who promoted three queer works while questioning why LGTBI literature appears separate from what is usually presented as general literature. Her intervention gathered tens of thousands of views and around five hundred comments, according to the article published by El País.
Part of the conversation supported the idea that a label can reduce a work to identity or alienate heterosexual readers. Another part defended that this classification allows locating stories that until very recently occupied a minimal or nonexistent space on new release tables and in general recommendations.
The response from the booktuber Juan Naranjo focused on the reading experience. He explained that during his adolescence, he barely found stories similar to his own and that he now values those narratives being visible. The exchange does not resolve the debate, but it clarifies its practical dimension: how a book reaches those who need it.
Mirror, window, and meeting point
Books fulfill at least two functions that intersect here. They can be a mirror, because they allow recognition in characters and desires; and a window, because they bring different experiences closer. For part of the queer audience, the label facilitates the mirror. For other readers, it can become an invitation to look through the window.
The bookseller’s objection points to a real reception problem: there are people who interpret the LGTBI category as a territory intended only for the community. However, gender categories —historical, noir, or romantic novels— are commonly used to guide and not to limit who can read them.
The difference lies in the fact that heterosexuality has functioned for a long time as an unlabelled norm. Adventures, fantasy, espionage, or romantic comedy could contain heterosexual relationships without receiving an identity mark. When love or desire deviated from that pattern, their presence was secondary, coded, or directly erased.
The data explains why visibility matters
The most concrete data from the debate comes from the recent essay by Ramón Martínez, which explores the queer presence in Spanish literature. In his epilogue, he compares the titles registered by the Madrid bookstore Berkana between 2016 and 2024 with the total number of books published in Spain during that period.
The result, reported by El País, is that those works do not reach 1% of the total. In parallel, more than 10% of the Spanish population declares belonging to the LGTBIQ+ community. They are not directly equivalent magnitudes —one measures titles and the other population identity—, but together they show that the disappearance of labels does not occur in a scenario of representative saturation.
Martínez links this need for tracking with a long tradition, from the jarchas of the 11th century to the present. The problem is not only how many new works are published, but how voices, desires, and readings that literary history left on the margins are recovered and made accessible.
Labeling without enclosing
The solution does not have to be binary. A bookstore can identify LGTBI themes without making them the only feature of a work. The same title can occupy the historical novel table, appear in general recommendations, and at the same time, be part of a queer selection. Classification can be an additional door, not a border.
Language also matters. Presenting an LGTBI section as opposed to “normal” literature inadvertently reproduces the idea that other stories are the universal measure. Talking about general literature, contemporary narrative, or specific genres allows for organization without establishing a hierarchy between normal lives and marked lives.
The Spanish debate thus reaches an open but productive conclusion: the label can be uncomfortable when it simplifies, and it can be decisive when it guides. As long as representation remains below the social space of the community, visibility will continue to be a tool, as long as it is combined with transversal circulation and literary criteria.
