Madrid

Chueca holds Madrid's highest LGBTQI+ density, with more than sixty verified bars, clubs and restaurants. Plaza de Chueca is the nerve centre, the surrounding streets are pedestrianised and full of terraces, and the atmosphere does not depend on Pride: it works twelve months a year.

The offer mixes the classic gay end, with venues such as the LL Show Bar and the Black & White, with the alternative queer one at Mondo Disko and La Vía Láctea, the Berkana bookshop and the mixed cafés. The secondary poles are Malasaña, for the alternative side, and Lavapiés, for the migrant queer one.

MADO, Madrid's Pride, is the largest in Europe by attendance, with AEGAL as its historic organiser. The whole city throws itself into it: the opening speech in Chueca, the march, the floats along Gran Vía and the concerts in Plaza de Pedro Zerolo and Plaza de Vázquez de Mella.

Madrid hosted WorldPride in 2017, with some 3.5 million attendees according to the organisers, the largest LGBT event held in Europe up to then. Outside July there are more dates: FITUR LGBT, inside the tourism fair, in January, and Madrid Spring Pride, in April.

Chueca is Madrid's historic LGBTQI+ neighbourhood, inside the Centro district. The core is Plaza de Chueca and the streets around it. It has been tied to the community since the late eighties, when the first bars opened on Augusto Figueroa, Pelayo and Hortaleza.

The city council maintains permanent rainbow crossings in the neighbourhood as a recognised institutional gesture. On foot it is five minutes to Gran Vía, eight to Sol and twelve to the Retiro. And it is very well connected by metro, with the Chueca stop on line 5.

Madrid concentrates Spain's densest LGBT community infrastructure. COGAM, the Madrid collective founded in 1986, and FELGTBI+, the national federation based in the city, carry the weight of the activism. And Berkana has been the reference LGBT bookshop since 1993.

The city council's LGBTI programme offers psychological, legal and social support. Among health services, the Clínica Sandoval specialises in sexually transmitted infections and the Hospital La Paz houses the reference trans unit.