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In Spain they know: it is a good idea to open up to LGBT tourists.

In previous articles (The Ideal Traveller and Gay Capital) I showed that LGBT tourists are very interesting: they travel more often, stay longer, spend more and often travel outside the peak season. This has not gone unnoticed at many destinations. Spain has been a leader in this area for years. But before that came about, some other things happened.

Want to get married?

In 2005, members of the Spanish People’s Party, together with Spanish bishops and the ‘Spanish Family Forum’, led 166,000 demonstrators in a march against the legalization of ‘gay marriage’*. They themselves claimed that there were 1.5 million participants. To no avail: the law was introduced later that year. The result of the vote was not very overwhelming: 187–147. It was the third country, after the Netherlands and Belgium, to achieve this.

Fun fact: (church) documents were found in Spain of a man-man marriage from 1061, almost 1,000 years earlier, and also of a women’s marriage from 1901.

NB: The legalization of ‘gay marriage’* not only represents social progress, but can also help a country generate prosperity. An example of this can be seen in Costa Rica, where the implementation of this legislation in 2020 led to a 1% increase in the country’s GDP from tourism, business and healthcare.

Tourist Office

The Spanish CVB has tailored their advertisements to LGBT travelers several times in various countries: below are examples from the Netherlands, Germany and the US. These were a variation on their long-running campaign ‘Smile! You are in…’

Cities themselves, such as Barcelona, also wanted to paint themselves in rainbows. This city makes nice use of Gaudì’s local iconography, and further explained that you don’t have to indicate whether you are LGBT or not when you come to them. ‘There is room for everyone.’

Government

In 2015, Cristina Cifuentes, president of the Madrid region and member of the same party that previously led the aforementioned protest, arranged for the rainbow flag to be flown on municipal buildings to show support for the LGBT community. A complete turnaround was made in ten years. I see an encouraging trend here – but was it all lovingly intended, or does money (also) play a role? In other words: pinkwashing?

The Spanish government, both national, regional and local, is making good attempts at Marketing the Rainbow. She does this together with (semi-)governmental companies, such as Correos (Mail), but certainly also with the business community, especially event managers. More about the latter next week.

In 2020, Correos released a special rainbow stamp to celebrate Pride Month. They are still a state-owned company, with 53,000 employees. They process 5.4 billion pieces of mail per year, making them one of the largest postal services in the world.

In addition to the attention via the stamp, they also gave some of their vans and mailboxes a rainbow makeover, a package was offered with a stamp, flag, fan and card, and the mailbox was also available as a piggy bank.

Demand for these stamps increased dramatically after Santiago Abascal, leader of the homophobic ‘family values’ party Vox, criticized the Spanish postal service for ‘promoting homosexuality’. The publicity that this outrage generated had an earned media value of €800,000. Thank you, Sr. Abascal!

The stamp mentions a street in Torremolinos, Pasaje Begoña, known as ‘the Spanish Stonewall’. During the Franco regime, this street was a refuge for members of the LGBT community and in 2019 it was declared a Site of Historical Interest.

The Snickers scandal

Another example of how the government can take an active role in these types of matters.

When Snickers released the short video ‘El Chiringuito’ (the little bar) in their series ‘You’re not yourself when you’re hungry’ in 2021, with gay influencer Aless Gibaja, all hell broke loose. The video went viral – it also has over 215,000 views on my YT – before it was hastily deleted. We see the effeminate Gibaja who, after a bite of a Snickers, suddenly becomes a bearded man with a low voice with the tagline ‘Better this way?’

There was a call for a boycott of the brand. The State Federation of LGBT was among the groups to condemn it, saying it was “shameful and unfortunate that there are companies that continue to perpetuate stereotypes and promote homophobia.”

The Spanish Minister of Equality, Irene Montero, also weighed in. “I wonder who would think it’s a good idea to use homophobia as a business strategy,” she said on Twitter. ‘Our society is diverse and tolerant. Hopefully, those with the power to decide what we see and hear in advertisements and TV programs will learn that too.”

Important detail: the incident took place weeks after Spain was shocked by the fatal assault of a young gay man. Snickers Spain apologized profusely and added: ‘In this particular campaign, we wanted to convey in a friendly and light-hearted way that hunger can change your character. At no time was the intention to stigmatize or offend any individual or collective.” Think again, folks.

Snickers also had to remove the homophobic ‘Love Boat’ advertisement from their website in 2007. A fox is not caught twice in the same snare… Or simply: ‘there’s only one thing worse than them talking about you…’?

Next week: so what does Spain offer?

* I always put this in quotes because it is identical to a heterosexual marriage, but when introduced in the Netherlands in 2001 it was officially called “opening up civil marriage to couples of the same sex” and that is quite a mouthful. To indicate that it concerns such couples, I use ‘gay marriage’.

Alfred Verhoeven is a marketer and is in the final phase of his PhD research Marketing the Rainbow. He previously wrote for ILOVEGAY about Everyone’s gay in Amsterdam, I Amsterdam, Gay Capital, The Ideal Traveler, Diversity & Language, Playing with Pronouns, Abercrombie & Fitch : The Rise & The Fall, Play the gayme: about SIMS and Candy Crush, Diversity in Toys, LEGO does the rainbow, Barbiemania, Bud Light and the 4 bln dollar woman, Dutch retailer HEMA loves everybody, Pronouns, About those rainbows, Alphabet soup, M&M’s and the lesbian invasion, Magnum and the lesbian wedding, Marketing the Rainbow: the process and all that came before it, Sport and (un)sportmanship,  Why you need a supplier diversity program, BeNeLux LGBTIQ+ Business Chamber (BGLBC), From B2C and B2B to B2G and G2G (oh, and G2C), The Men from Atlantis, The other kind of cruising, Booking.com, Home Deco, Haters and trolls: the ‘letter to the editor’ of the 21st century, 5 Bizarre LGBT Videos, TRANSparency, Transgender persons as a target group, Matchmaking, 5 videos that went viral, From Representation To Respect, Cultural sensitivities and social involvement in marketing, 4 reasons to practice diversity and The Rules of Market Segmentation.