The emergence of overt sexual themes in the Spanish novel of the last quarter of the twentieth century is closely related to the profound changes (political, legal, religious, and social) taking place in Spanish society over those years. While some of these changes affected other Western nations at approximately the same time (and there was a corresponding boom in homosexual themes in mainstream literature), there are some peculiarities in the case of Spain. Strictly censored during the dictatorship, erotic literature gradually became associated with a set of forbidden topics, such as violence, nudity, drugs, and critical comments about the conservative values defended by the regime and the Church. Not surprisingly, these were the themes that dissident writers of fiction embraced to express their opposition to the authoritarian regime. The same happened with the expression of outlawed identities, such as Catalan and Basque nationalism and all forms of sexuality outside marriage. Since in one way or another all these themes and identities were closely associated with the cause of freedom and anti-Francoism, it became relatively common for Spanish writers of the second half of the twentieth century to combine them. In this chapter, we shall look at positive versions of homosexuality in relation to ideas of freedom, at both political and individual level.

Under Franco's regime, homosexuals and other sexual minorities had been severely repressed by the law, both indirectly (public scandal, moral diktat, and so on) and also directly with the promulgation of a Ley de peligrosidad social, an act introduced in the last years of the regime that targeted tramps, prostitutes, procurers, homosexuals, and others deemed potentially dangerous to the wellbeing of society. Homosexuals sentenced under this legislation were typically confined to a psychiatric hospital and forced to undergo corrective sexual therapy; three-year jail terms were common. The act was enforced between 1970 and 1978 but criticized on many fronts; after Franco's death in 1975 that criticism increased both in frequency and in volume. Dignitat, a Barcelona-based homosexual liberation group led by a Jesuit, Salvador Guasch Figueras, issued in January 1977 a statement signed by a number of psychiatrists. Known as the Documento de los 24, it asserted that sexual orientation was not a choice, that homophobia was culturally determined, and that homosexual acts constituted natural behaviour for homosexuals.