From vagrants to social dangers: how Spain locked up homosexuals
What in Lorca’s casino was a secret vote, the Franco regime turned into law and prison. How do you punish someone not for what they do but for what they are?
In La bola negra (Los Javis, 2026), exclusion begins in a casino: members reject a young man with black balls because of rumours about his homosexuality. Lorca imagined that scene in 1936. What came afterwards in Spain was much more than a private vote. The Franco dictatorship turned homosexuality into a matter for the police and the prisons, with laws that were applied for a quarter of a century and whose victims were not recognised until the twenty-first century.
The Vagrancy Law (Ley de Vagos y Maleantes) was passed in 1933, during the Second Republic, to allow security measures against people considered dangerous even if they had not committed a specific crime. Originally it did not mention homosexuals. On 15 July 1954, the Franco regime amended it to include them expressly, alongside pimps and procurers, among the categories subject to confinement, surveillance and bans on living in certain places.
// The lawsFrom vagrancy to dangerousness
In 1970 the dictatorship replaced that law with the Law on Social Danger and Rehabilitation, which came into force in 1971. It declared those who performed homosexual acts to be in a «dangerous state» and provided for their confinement in re-education establishments. In practice, specific prison centres were set up: in Huelva and in Badajoz, where prisoners were separated according to the authorities’ classification of their sexual behaviour. Earlier, between 1954 and 1966, the agricultural penal colony of Tefía had operated on Fuerteventura, where dozens of gay men survived hunger, forced labour and ill-treatment.
The most frequently cited estimates speak of more than three thousand people punished under this law across Spain and around a thousand who passed through the prisons of Huelva and Badajoz between 1970 and 1979. The reference to homosexuality was removed by a reform published in the Official State Gazette on 11 January 1979. The whole law was not repealed until the new Penal Code of 1995.
Punishing what someone is
Labelling theory holds that deviance is not a quality of acts but the result of someone with power applying a label. The Law on Social Danger is an extreme case: it did not punish harm to anyone, but a condition, being homosexual, which it declared «dangerous» by definition. The consequences were exactly those the theory predicts: records that followed the person, loss of work and family, and a public identity as «dangerous» that many victims carried for decades. It is the casino’s black ball turned into the state.
// ReparationHalf a century to acknowledge it
Reparation came late. In 2009, after the Historical Memory Law of 2007, the government approved compensation for those who had been imprisoned because of their sexual orientation or gender identity; the amount depended on the time spent in confinement, and it was claimed by a small number of people, many of them already old and some reluctant to relive what had happened. The Democratic Memory Law of 2022 expressly included LGBTI people among the victims of the dictatorship, and the former colony of Tefía was declared a Site of Democratic Memory.
For years, many of those people continued to appear in police records. Recovering their stories, as research such as Arturo Arnalte’s Redada de violetas does, is part of what the film takes up in its third story, set in 2017: a grandson who discovers what his family kept silent.
// In the archiveLa bola negra, case by case
The film is not about these laws, but it presupposes them. Its antagonists —the casino board and the apparatus that uses Sebastián as bait— and the real history of Lorca’s murder are in the La bola negra hub.
Three key ideas
- In 1954 the Franco regime amended the Vagrancy Law (1933) to include homosexuals; in 1970 the Law on Social Danger and Rehabilitation declared them «dangerous» and allowed them to be confined in special prisons such as those in Huelva and Badajoz.
- Between 1954 and 1966 the penal colony of Tefía operated on Fuerteventura. Homosexuality was removed from the law in January 1979; the whole law was not repealed until 1995.
- Reparation came in the twenty-first century: compensation in 2009, recognition as victims in the Democratic Memory Law of 2022 and Tefía declared a Site of Democratic Memory.
Sources · further reading
- Arnalte, A. (2003). Redada de violetas: la represión de los homosexuales durante el franquismo. La Esfera de los Libros.
- Law 16/1970 of 4 August on social danger and rehabilitation. Boletín Oficial del Estado.
- Becker, H. S. (1963). Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. Free Press.
// Quick challengeWhich theory best explains Ley de Peligrosidad Social?
Frequently asked questions
What was the Vagrancy Law?
A 1933 law of the Second Republic that allowed security measures against people considered dangerous. In 1954 the Franco regime amended it to include homosexuals expressly.
What did the Law on Social Danger and Rehabilitation do?
Passed in 1970, it declared those who performed homosexual acts «socially dangerous» and allowed them to be confined in special centres, such as the prisons of Huelva and Badajoz. Homosexuality was removed from the law in January 1979.
Have the victims received reparation?
Partly. Compensation for those imprisoned was approved in 2009, the Democratic Memory Law of 2022 recognises them as victims and the colony of Tefía on Fuerteventura was declared a Site of Democratic Memory.