On our first Friday in Lisbon we passed through the large square down by the old port–the former gateway to the city. Tents and scaffolding were being erected and the signs on the billboards indicated that the upcoming activities were in celebration of “gay pride.”
On Saturday night, our last night in Lisbon, we wandered down to the square to see what was going on. The performance was in full flower and a sizable crowd had gathered there, though I must say that this celebration was nothing–and I mean nothing–like the Love Parade celebrations which go on in Germany. This year’s Love Parade in Duisberg, Germany being a good example of the wild abandon and chaos that usually reigns (although fortunately, in most previous Love Parades there haven't been stampedes and with people injured and killed). I attended the Love Parade in Berlin, in 2003, apparently the last year Berlin was willing to host the parade, since it had grown to a gathering of a million and a half by 1999. In 2003, when I attended, it was still attracting crowds of approximately 750,000. Pride parades seem to be cousins of the Love Parade, although most are an abbreviated size by comparison (but apparently not the Pride Parade in Madrid). Like the Love Parades they are held in the summer months all over Europe and are tremendous fun to watch-both a fashion carnival and a techno music extravaganza.
The performers at the square in Lisbon were in drag–belting out their tunes with a great deal of flourish and pizazz and the crowd was loving it.
But this was just a hint of what was to come in Madrid. Having no idea that a gay parade was planned for the Saturday that we were arriving in Madrid, we rolled into town in the midst of the post-parade gay euphoria. We remembered at this point that our hotel had advertised that it was “gay friendly” in the literature. It was. And its location was obviously in the center of the gay quarter of the city.
Interestingly shaped breads and other hot items were displayed in the windows along our street and rainbow flags hung from the lamp posts several blocks around our hotel in all directions. It was full party mode. We were astounded. I had never seen so many gay men on any single street in my life (who weren’t part of a parade). I found it rather festive, but my male traveling companion was a little nervous.
It seemed that gays from around the globe had flocked to Madrid to see the sights and strut their stuff. The party continued through Sunday night. By Monday, however, only occasionally did we see a gay couple on the same tourist routes that we were taking.
Madrid seems generally to be a rather chaotic city–only a small part of the chaos being the gay pride celebration.
The culmination of the chaos occurred for us, however, only after we had returned to the hotel on Monday. After dinner we had stopped for ice-cream which we had taken to a nice little patio on the hotel roof that looked out over the street.
I was just savoring the last scoop of pistachio when we saw smoke billowing up from below. We looked over the wall and could see that something was ablaze below our building. My first thought was, “This is the 5th floor and I’m getting the hell out!” We alerted the man at the desk on our way past him and we all hurried down the stairs into the street.
Sirens were blaring and the first to arrive was a police vehicle. A strapping young officer sprang from the police car with a fire-extinguisher and ran to the trash bin that was aflame. (There were large bins along the street for debris from local renovations, but the paraders had supplied a great deal more flammable trash to the containers over the weekend. It appeared that a smoker may have tossed his cigarette into one receptacle and a nice blaze had erupted. The steel bin contained the fire quite well really, but there was always the danger that something nearby would catch fire–then the whole street might burst into flames.) The officer braced himself and pulled the trigger. Nothing came out of the extinguisher however, and the melting plastic in the bin continued spewing impressive billows of acrid smoke. The officer whacked the thing. Still nothing. Chaos ensued. But by this time the fire engines arrived and everyone in all the buildings up and down the street had come out to see what was going on.
We took the opportunity to make our exit for a half hour or so, in search of bottled water. Good thing, apparently, since cholera was threatening to encroach on the neighborhood. When we returned, the fire was out, and aside from the street being temporarily closed to traffic while the mess was being cleaned up, there was nothing to get in the way of sleeping. It was 1 p.m. after all–our witching hour.
