On an afternoon where memory became a tribute and a space of life, the Pedro Zerolo Foundation called for something more than recognition: it called for responsibility. From Rainbow Magazine, we were present at AcciĆ³n TriĆ”ngulo to rememberāand above all activateāKike Poveda’s legacy.
But talking about Kike is not just naming a person. It is naming a way of being in the world.
Kike Poveda was a historical activist of the LGTBI+ movement and HIV activism in Spain. A survivorāin the most political sense of the wordāwho decided to come forward when doing so implied stigma, exclusion and violence. In the hardest years, when HIV was synonymous with silence or social death, he chose visibility as a tool of dignity.
Its story does not begin in the spotlight, but in grassroots militancy. Since the 90s, he participated in initiatives such as the distribution of LGTBI information in contexts where there was not even an organized community, promoting groups in Alicante and weaving networks where there were none.
Already in Madrid, his mark became even deeper: he was the promoter of the group of gays with HIV in COGAM and the group of older people with HIV at the 26 de Diciembre Foundation. Fundamental spaces not only for care, but for the dignity of lives plagued by stigma.
Kike not only fought: he embodied a radical way of understanding life. He lived with HIV, diabetes, bipolar and Parkinson’s, but never in hiding. Never from shame. His activism crossed his own body, his history, his way of inhabiting the world. He was, as those who knew him defined him, someone who never gave up freedom or joy.
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His career was recognized with the Jancho Barrios Honorary Award, a gesture that not only celebrated a life, but a political position: that of those who supported HIV activism when everything was against.
And perhaps one of the phrases that best defines him does not speak of identity, but of struggle: first of all, Kike defined himself as an anti-fascist.
The tribute was not a closing. It was an uncomfortable and necessary reminder: the rights that we celebrate today exist because there were bodies like theirs, exposed, visible, disobedient. That’s why the applause and tears of emotion at the AcciĆ³n TriĆ”ngulo headquarters today in the Lavapies neighborhood in Madrid.
From the perspective of law, his figure clearly challenges: there is no democracy without real equality, and there is no equality without active memory. The LGTBQ+ struggle cannot afford to forget those who upheld the impossible.
Among friends, organizations, foundations and part of society, they not only attended an event. It gave the feeling of common space and a place in that continuity.
Because Kike Poveda is not past.
It is a line of action with memory.
Kike Poveda always.
