- Under the motto To the streets with pride! Dissidence and resistance, the largest march for civil rights in Europe will travel through Madrid on July 4.
- The organizing entities warn that physical hate crimes have tripled alarmingly in the national territory in the last two years.
- Paula Iglesias and Ronny de la Cruz link the increase in violence with the legitimization of discriminatory speeches in public forums and institutions.
Political urgency and community self-defense will assume absolute control of the capital’s social agenda. The LGTBI+ State Federation (FELGTBI+) and the Madrid collective COGAM have appeared jointly this Wednesday at a press conference to activate a historic social mobilization ahead of the state Pride 2026 demonstration. Institutional spokespersons have stressed that the peaceful occupation of public space is more essential than ever, coinciding with a period of maximum polarization where physical attacks and organized speeches against sexual diversity continue to increase.
A statistical paradox: more laws but triple the violence
The official presentation of the great march next Saturday, July 4, has served to shed light on a worrying sociological contradiction. The president of the State Federation, Paula Iglesias, has revealed a devastating statistical fact: despite having a cutting-edge legal framework at the level of administrative protections, physical and verbal attacks directed towards members of the group have mathematically tripled in the space of just two years in Spain.
This escalation of systematic violence has an ideological root perfectly identified by human rights organizations. Iglesias has directly pointed to the unpunished spread of hate speech in the public sphere as the catalyst that legitimizes criminal behavior on the streets. As an emergency countermeasure, the Federation has reiterated the urgent need to sign a State Pact against hate speech to effectively protect social groups exposed to a situation of multiple vulnerability.
Congress votes on the criminal classification of pseudotherapies
The press conference has strategically coincided with the eve of a crucial legislative day in the Cortes Generales. This Thursday, the bill aimed at reforming the Penal Code to criminalize conversion practices with prison sentences of up to two years will be put to a final vote in the Congress of Deputies. The state spokesperson has made a direct appeal to parliamentarians with the right to vote, demanding democratic responsibility from them to eradicate interventions that the UN itself classifies as psychological torture.
The civil collective aspires to turn the great march on July 4 into a day of celebration for the achievement of this penal protection, but without neglecting the range of pending demands. Among the priority reasons that justify this year’s call, Iglesias has listed the drama of forced sexile in rural areas, the legal limbo suffered by non-binary and intersexual identities, the rise in workplace harassment revealed by the 40dB Confidence Index and the institutional helplessness that hits LGBTI+ migrants, older people or those living with HIV.
The consequences of the institutional legitimation of hate
For his part, the president of COGAM, Ronny de la Cruz, has warned about the structural nature of current harassment, rejecting that the attacks respond to isolated or merely casual events. The Madrid activist has denounced that the opening of spaces of validation for intolerance within public institutions and parliamentary forums conveys a message of total impunity towards aggressors, who feel legitimized to act with violence when they see their prejudices normalized in official discourse.
De la Cruz has claimed the umbilical cord that unites this call with the original spirit of the Stonewall riots of 1969, remembering that Pride is, above all, a tool of civil protest against the isolation and exclusion of minorities. The response of the Madrid associative fabric to the proliferation of fear will be forceful: the July 4 demonstration will respond to hatred by redoubling visibility, strengthening community ties and transforming the capital into a safe environment where no person is forced to hide their identity or leave their neighborhood for fear of suffering reprisals.
