Latest news with #Chueca
CNN
16 hours ago
- Entertainment
- CNN
Madrid Pride: Runners compete in city's famous high-heel race
Spectators gathered on the cobblestone streets of Madrid's Chueca neighborhood this week to watch one of Spain's most curious races: the 'Carrera de Tacones,' or heel race. Held annually as part of the city's Pride celebrations, the race sees competitors — mostly men in towering heels — pound Calle de Pelayo, as racers have done each year for decades. Whoops, cheers, and gasps were heard throughout the crowd as racers tried to outpace each other on Thursday — some stumbling ungracefully in unruly heels towards the finish line. Despite the frenzy, an event of this scale and importance to Spain's LGBTQ+ community takes careful planning. Especially when it's become increasingly popular. 'There will be seven races in total, much more than in recent years,' explained David Bonillo, the event's manager since 2014, who started work early on the day of the event at LL Bar, the iconic drag establishment that founded the competition in the late 1990s. 'Six qualification races at 6pm. Then, the winners will face-off in the grand finale.' The Carrera de Tacones has rules, and the organizers are strict. In the back room of a neighboring sportswear shop, where runners check-in before the race, one staff member was found taping participants' shoes tightly to their ankles with black duct tape to reduce the chances of sprains and breaks. Nearer to the store's entrance, another was charged with measuring the heels with well-worn tape. Runners face disqualification for any footwear under 10 cm high (about four inches). 'I'm sorry, but you're not going to be able to race,' the woman measuring told a visibly disappointed racer, Edson Escolar, who was cradling a pair of blue stilettoes. '(It's) two centimeters too short.' Escolar told CNN that he had travelled from Guatemala to join the race. 'In Guatemala, we have Pride but it's nothing like this. People there still look at you funny if you wear feminine clothes. Here, I feel so free.' 'Maybe they'll let me race if I ask again nicely,' he said hopefully with a smile. But Escolar was nowhere to be found at the starting line. 'We have a couple of rules to keep the race fair,' said Bonillo. 'It's important to maintain them so we can continue to organize this special tradition for years to come.' There are few in Spain who know more about the race's humble beginnings than the drag queen known as Chumina Power. The singer and comedian is one of the most well-known faces in Chueca. This year, she presented the race with a mix of singing, dancing and commentary from a small platform near the finish line. Power attended the event's first ever race and began working as a drag performer at LL Bar a few years later. 'The high heel race has been going on for 30 years, but at first, it was a tiny event with just a few people,' she recalled. 'Pride itself was also small. The first celebrations in this country took place across only two small streets here, and Calle de Pelayo was one of them.' 'Most people didn't come to Pride to demonstrate because it was still frowned upon back then,' she said. 'But the race grew with Madrid Pride, (which is) now one of the most important festivals in Spain.' Known as 'Orgullo Gay de Madrid,' Madrid Pride began as a political demonstration in 1978. In 2019 it became Europe's largest Pride celebration, drawing around two million visitors annually. As Power returned to the stage, racers began their final stretches. Anticipation was growing in the crowd. People started to huddle closer to the edge of the makeshift running track. Each of the qualifying heats featured a mix of experience and youth. Some runners were anxious and quiet. Others joked together, drinks in hand. Brian Healy, originally from Ireland, has been living in Madrid for seven years. 'I've competed every year since 2018 and I love it,' he said. 'I bought these shoes online from China, and something felt different when I put them on,' he continued, easing himself down to the ground to stretch. 'They were so cheap they didn't even have a left and right one! They were both the same, but I've kind of got used to it now,' he joked. For some like Pablo Lopez, who chose a long, loose pair of black leather boots, it was their first race. 'I'm really scared,' Lopez said with a shy smile. 'I practiced a little bit at home, walking and running slowly, but the ground is different here.' And before the final race, another problem emerged: shoe fatigue. At one point, a finalist lifted their leg to reveal their bloodied toes and the remains of a shredded shoe. For the rest of the finalists, there was a surprise in store. All six would have to make a stop to change into a long dress, don a wig, and carry a handbag filled with bricks to the finish line on Power's stage. The final race couldn't have been closer. The first and second place-winners were separated by less than a second. 'This was so much fun, and I'm so pleased to have won it,' said Raul Prieto, who had travelled to Madrid for the race from his hometown of Bilbao. Clutching a large check for €350 (about $412), he added: 'I want to run this race every year for the rest of time!'
CNN
20 hours ago
- Entertainment
- CNN
Madrid Pride: Runners compete in city's famous high-heel race
Spectators gathered on the cobblestone streets of Madrid's Chueca neighborhood this week to watch one of Spain's most curious races: the 'Carrera de Tacones,' or heel race. Held annually as part of the city's Pride celebrations, the race sees competitors — mostly men in towering heels — pound Calle de Pelayo, as racers have done each year for decades. Whoops, cheers, and gasps were heard throughout the crowd as racers tried to outpace each other on Thursday — some stumbling ungracefully in unruly heels towards the finish line. Despite the frenzy, an event of this scale and importance to Spain's LGBTQ+ community takes careful planning. Especially when it's become increasingly popular. 'There will be seven races in total, much more than in recent years,' explained David Bonillo, the event's manager since 2014, who started work early on the day of the event at LL Bar, the iconic drag establishment that founded the competition in the late 1990s. 'Six qualification races at 6pm. Then, the winners will face-off in the grand finale.' The Carrera de Tacones has rules, and the organizers are strict. In the back room of a neighboring sportswear shop, where runners check-in before the race, one staff member was found taping participants' shoes tightly to their ankles with black duct tape to reduce the chances of sprains and breaks. Nearer to the store's entrance, another was charged with measuring the heels with well-worn tape. Runners face disqualification for any footwear under 10 cm high (about four inches). 'I'm sorry, but you're not going to be able to race,' the woman measuring told a visibly disappointed racer, Edson Escolar, who was cradling a pair of blue stilettoes. '(It's) two centimeters too short.' Escolar told CNN that he had travelled from Guatemala to join the race. 'In Guatemala, we have Pride but it's nothing like this. People there still look at you funny if you wear feminine clothes. Here, I feel so free.' 'Maybe they'll let me race if I ask again nicely,' he said hopefully with a smile. But Escolar was nowhere to be found at the starting line. 'We have a couple of rules to keep the race fair,' said Bonillo. 'It's important to maintain them so we can continue to organize this special tradition for years to come.' There are few in Spain who know more about the race's humble beginnings than the drag queen known as Chumina Power. The singer and comedian is one of the most well-known faces in Chueca. This year, she presented the race with a mix of singing, dancing and commentary from a small platform near the finish line. Power attended the event's first ever race and began working as a drag performer at LL Bar a few years later. 'The high heel race has been going on for 30 years, but at first, it was a tiny event with just a few people,' she recalled. 'Pride itself was also small. The first celebrations in this country took place across only two small streets here, and Calle de Pelayo was one of them.' 'Most people didn't come to Pride to demonstrate because it was still frowned upon back then,' she said. 'But the race grew with Madrid Pride, (which is) now one of the most important festivals in Spain.' Known as 'Orgullo Gay de Madrid,' Madrid Pride began as a political demonstration in 1978. In 2019 it became Europe's largest Pride celebration, drawing around two million visitors annually. As Power returned to the stage, racers began their final stretches. Anticipation was growing in the crowd. People started to huddle closer to the edge of the makeshift running track. Each of the qualifying heats featured a mix of experience and youth. Some runners were anxious and quiet. Others joked together, drinks in hand. Brian Healy, originally from Ireland, has been living in Madrid for seven years. 'I've competed every year since 2018 and I love it,' he said. 'I bought these shoes online from China, and something felt different when I put them on,' he continued, easing himself down to the ground to stretch. 'They were so cheap they didn't even have a left and right one! They were both the same, but I've kind of got used to it now,' he joked. For some like Pablo Lopez, who chose a long, loose pair of black leather boots, it was their first race. 'I'm really scared,' Lopez said with a shy smile. 'I practiced a little bit at home, walking and running slowly, but the ground is different here.' And before the final race, another problem emerged: shoe fatigue. At one point, a finalist lifted their leg to reveal their bloodied toes and the remains of a shredded shoe. For the rest of the finalists, there was a surprise in store. All six would have to make a stop to change into a long dress, don a wig, and carry a handbag filled with bricks to the finish line on Power's stage. The final race couldn't have been closer. The first and second place-winners were separated by less than a second. 'This was so much fun, and I'm so pleased to have won it,' said Raul Prieto, who had travelled to Madrid for the race from his hometown of Bilbao. Clutching a large check for €350 (about $412), he added: 'I want to run this race every year for the rest of time!'
CNN
21 hours ago
- Entertainment
- CNN
Madrid Pride: Runners compete in city's famous high-heel race
Spectators gathered on the cobblestone streets of Madrid's Chueca neighborhood this week to watch one of Spain's most curious races: the 'Carrera de Tacones,' or heel race. Held annually as part of the city's Pride celebrations, the race sees competitors — mostly men in towering heels — pound Calle de Pelayo, as racers have done each year for decades. Whoops, cheers, and gasps were heard throughout the crowd as racers tried to outpace each other on Thursday — some stumbling ungracefully in unruly heels towards the finish line. Despite the frenzy, an event of this scale and importance to Spain's LGBTQ+ community takes careful planning. Especially when it's become increasingly popular. 'There will be seven races in total, much more than in recent years,' explained David Bonillo, the event's manager since 2014, who started work early on the day of the event at LL Bar, the iconic drag establishment that founded the competition in the late 1990s. 'Six qualification races at 6pm. Then, the winners will face-off in the grand finale.' The Carrera de Tacones has rules, and the organizers are strict. In the back room of a neighboring sportswear shop, where runners check-in before the race, one staff member was found taping participants' shoes tightly to their ankles with black duct tape to reduce the chances of sprains and breaks. Nearer to the store's entrance, another was charged with measuring the heels with well-worn tape. Runners face disqualification for any footwear under 10 cm high (about four inches). 'I'm sorry, but you're not going to be able to race,' the woman measuring told a visibly disappointed racer, Edson Escolar, who was cradling a pair of blue stilettoes. '(It's) two centimeters too short.' Escolar told CNN that he had travelled from Guatemala to join the race. 'In Guatemala, we have Pride but it's nothing like this. People there still look at you funny if you wear feminine clothes. Here, I feel so free.' 'Maybe they'll let me race if I ask again nicely,' he said hopefully with a smile. But Escolar was nowhere to be found at the starting line. 'We have a couple of rules to keep the race fair,' said Bonillo. 'It's important to maintain them so we can continue to organize this special tradition for years to come.' There are few in Spain who know more about the race's humble beginnings than the drag queen known as Chumina Power. The singer and comedian is one of the most well-known faces in Chueca. This year, she presented the race with a mix of singing, dancing and commentary from a small platform near the finish line. Power attended the event's first ever race and began working as a drag performer at LL Bar a few years later. 'The high heel race has been going on for 30 years, but at first, it was a tiny event with just a few people,' she recalled. 'Pride itself was also small. The first celebrations in this country took place across only two small streets here, and Calle de Pelayo was one of them.' 'Most people didn't come to Pride to demonstrate because it was still frowned upon back then,' she said. 'But the race grew with Madrid Pride, (which is) now one of the most important festivals in Spain.' Known as 'Orgullo Gay de Madrid,' Madrid Pride began as a political demonstration in 1978. In 2019 it became Europe's largest Pride celebration, drawing around two million visitors annually. As Power returned to the stage, racers began their final stretches. Anticipation was growing in the crowd. People started to huddle closer to the edge of the makeshift running track. Each of the qualifying heats featured a mix of experience and youth. Some runners were anxious and quiet. Others joked together, drinks in hand. Brian Healy, originally from Ireland, has been living in Madrid for seven years. 'I've competed every year since 2018 and I love it,' he said. 'I bought these shoes online from China, and something felt different when I put them on,' he continued, easing himself down to the ground to stretch. 'They were so cheap they didn't even have a left and right one! They were both the same, but I've kind of got used to it now,' he joked. For some like Pablo Lopez, who chose a long, loose pair of black leather boots, it was their first race. 'I'm really scared,' Lopez said with a shy smile. 'I practiced a little bit at home, walking and running slowly, but the ground is different here.' And before the final race, another problem emerged: shoe fatigue. At one point, a finalist lifted their leg to reveal their bloodied toes and the remains of a shredded shoe. For the rest of the finalists, there was a surprise in store. All six would have to make a stop to change into a long dress, don a wig, and carry a handbag filled with bricks to the finish line on Power's stage. The final race couldn't have been closer. The first and second place-winners were separated by less than a second. 'This was so much fun, and I'm so pleased to have won it,' said Raul Prieto, who had travelled to Madrid for the race from his hometown of Bilbao. Clutching a large check for €350 (about $412), he added: 'I want to run this race every year for the rest of time!'
The Guardian
16-03-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
‘Closing the circles of pain': Franco victims finally come home as 50th anniversary of dictator's death looms
Juan Chueca Sagarra was buried for the third time late on Wednesday afternoon, his tiny coffin, topped with a single white rose, stowed in a crypt in his home town of Magallón, which sits among vineyards and wind turbines under the huge, low skies of Aragón. His homecoming was as overdue as his murder was savage, and his afterlife has been peripatetic. The farm worker, trade unionist and father of five was 42 when he and five other men were shot dead by Francoists in the cemetery in the neighbouring town of Borja in August 1936. The general's coup against the Republican government had triggered the Spanish civil war a month earlier, unleashing a wave of terror against its ideological opponents, among them union activists and teachers. The six bodies were tossed into a mass grave, where they would lie for almost a quarter of a century. In April 1959, the remains of Chueca and 16 other murdered men from Magallón and the surrounding area were removed from the pit in Borja – without the knowledge or permission of their families – and packed into two large crates. Boxes 2,034 and 2,035 were then taken to the mountains outside Madrid and buried in the basilica of the Valley of the Fallen, the monument to Francoism and its creed of National Catholicism where the dictator himself was buried from 1975 to 2019. Spain's largest mass grave holds the remains of some 33,800 people from both the Nationalist and Republican sides, their bones crammed together under the basilica's gargantuan cross in a hollow attempt at postwar reconciliation. Only the Nationalist dead were labelled with names and surnames; the remainder, like Chueca and his companions, arrived in the valley in anonymous crates inscribed with nothing but the number of bodies they held and name of the town from whose mass grave they had been taken. Chueca's belated return, 89 years after his first burial and 66 after his second, followed a long campaign by the Association for the Relatives and Friends of Those Murdered and Buried in Magallón (AFAAEM). It also came almost three years after Spain's socialist-led government passed a Democratic Memory law intended to bring 'justice, reparation and dignity' to Franco's victims and to address the lingering and still poisonous legacy of the war and the dictatorship. To date, 160 requests have been made for the return of remains from the site – now known as the Valley of Cuelgamuros – and 29 sets of bones have been recovered and handed over. Fifteen of the 29 bodies have been positively identified using archive information, family statements and DNA tests. Wednesday's solemn ceremony, which took place in a ruined 14th-century church in Magallón, was the largest handover of Cuelgamuros remains so far. The bones of the 17 people who were taken from Borja to Cuelgamuros were formally returned by Ángel Victor Torres, Spain's minister for Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory, and by Fernando Martínez, the secretary of state for Democratic Memory. Four of those 17 have been identified. As well as Chueca, names have been put to the bones of Esteban Jiménez Ezpeleta and Felipe Gil Gascón, who were also from Magallón, and to those of Pedro Peralta Gil, who was from nearby Añon de Moncayo. As the ceremony began, Magallón's mayor, Esteban Lagota – the grandson of Esteban Jiménez Ezpeleta – was at pains to stress that the event was not about partisan politics, or blame, or revenge. 'The return of a person's remains to their family and to their home town is a small act of reparation that anyone can understand,' he told the 300 or so people who had packed the skeleton of the church. 'I would not like this to be used to divide society still further, nor to bring confrontations between different groups. Some essential, universal human values define us as people – and these values are above any political interest.' Such interests, however, are inescapable – even nine decades after a civil war that left 500,000 people dead. Last year, the conservative People's party (PP) and the far-right Vox party, which both opposed the Democratic Memory law, announced plans to replace it with so-called 'harmony laws' in three regions where they then governed in coalition, including Aragón. The move led three UN experts to warn that the law proposed in Aragón could thwart public historical memory projects and paper over the atrocities committed during the Franco dictatorship because it made no mention or explicit criticism of the regime's dictatorial nature. Other political interests are more personal. Shortly before the Magallón ceremony began, a local man made his own politics clear by quietly taping the red, yellow and purple tricolor flag of the Second Republic to the balustrade of the church's choir. The ever-restless ghosts of the past were stirred to life once more in January after the government announced that it would use the 50th anniversary of Franco's death – which falls in November this year – as an opportunity to celebrate Spain's rebirth as a vibrant, tolerant and progressive democracy. The initiative has not gone down well with the opposition. The PP, which proudly boasted of cutting Spain's historical memory budget to zero when it was last in office, is shunning the celebrations. Vox, meanwhile, has refused to participate in what it called an 'absurd necrophilia that divides Spaniards'. Critics of the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, have also suggested that the anniversary plans were concocted to distract from the corruption allegations his administration faces. But as he addressed the audience on Wednesday, Torres said the '50 years of freedom' initiative had one simple objective: 'To celebrate democracy and not to let anyone snatch it away from us or try to rewrite history.' Before the minister spoke, Francisco Etxeberria, the renowned forensic anthropologist leading the Cuelgamuros team, had made an eloquent defence of the need to keep bringing up the bodies and, with them, the buried truths of the past. He brandished an old pencil to make his point. 'This pencil has an extraordinary symbolism,' he said. 'It's not a piece of DNA or a document from an archive. It's a pencil found among the belongings of those 17 people. This pencil compels us to keep writing this story … Why do we do this? We do this to consolidate our democratic values and to strengthen our defence of human rights. Who doesn't get that?' An hour later, the crowd moved to the cemetery on the outskirts of Magallón. There, amid red and white roses and the odd, pointedly red-yellow-and-purple floral arrangement, the 17 sets of remains were reinterred. Ezpeleta, murdered at age 31, was laid to rest in the same tomb as his wife, Emilia, who died in 1976. The inscription beneath their photographs – which show Emilia as an old woman and Esteban a young man – reads: 'They cut short your life but your memory is ever present.' A few metres away, Pilar Chueca, 49, watched her grandfather's coffin as it was carried down into the crypt built by the AFAAEM, which has worked tirelessly to reunite the dead with their descendants. Chueca's father, Enrique, was four when he caught a final glimpse of his father being bundled into the back of the truck bound for Borja. 'My father said that his mother, Eulalia, suffered a lot as a widow with five children,' said Chueca. 'It wasn't just the way his father was killed.' To make an example of his widow, the Francoists shaved her head, made her drink castor oil – employed for its humiliating laxative effects – and paraded her through town. After her husband's murder, Eulalia and the children fled to Zaragoza, where she supported the family by working as a servant and taking in washing. 'They never went back to Magallón because of all the bad memories of that place,' said Chueca. Enrique died in June last year at 92, not long after giving the DNA sample that would identify his father's bones. As the afternoon light began to fade and the crowds drifted away, Pilar Gimeno, the president of the AFAAEM, walked over to the niche where the remains of her uncle, Felipe Gil Gascón, had just been placed alongside those of his mother, Inocenta. Gimeno hopes that tests will soon identify the bones of Felipe's murdered father, Conrado, so that he can join his wife and son. The veteran campaigner said the aim of the ceremony and the reburials was to give the victims back their long-denied dignity, to close the generational 'circles of pain' and to tell the truth about what happened – and about what could happen again. 'The proof of what happened is in the bones and in the bullet holes in those bones,' said Gimeno. 'Who can deny the truth of that?' If you have the truth, she added, perhaps you can stop these things from happening again. 'That's the danger right now,' she said. 'It's all getting very close again. That hatred is so great.'
