Instead of just hanging around dreading the news in the US this week we are going to hotfoot it  “across the Pond’ to London for all the fun of the Festival of Queer Culture in Spanish.  From 2nd to 26th November, the sixth edition of what has become one of Queerguru’s fave events kicks off big time. The festival has expanded to almost a month this year, bringing together fabulous cinema, literature, music, performance, research, and queer memory in its most ambitious program yet.  During its run, it will welcome Sara Torres, Pol Guasch, Hidrogenesse, Valeriano López, Patricia Langa, Julio Ruiz, and a new generation of international queer creators.

This year’s program explores dissent through the work of Federico García Lorca, trans histories, lesbian lives during Spain’s Second Republic, and queer archives from Spain and Latin America. The sixth edition will close with an English-language reading of Lorca’s Sonetos del amor oscuro, marking the 90th anniversary of his assassination.

The festival will open on Monday 2 November with the UK premiere of La Bola Negra, directed by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, and has been universally recognized as one of the best queer movies of the year.   After winning Best Director at Cannes and the Audience Awards in Sydney, Toronto and San Sebastián, the film has already attracted more than two million cinema-goers in Spain and has been selected to represent the country in the race for the 2027 Oscars.

The official opening will follow on Tuesday 3 November at the Spanish Ambassador’s residence in London. Artist Patricia Langa will present Tribute to Lorca, a performance combining dance, flamenco, poetry and lip-sync. Through her character Conchita, Langa pays tribute to Federico García Lorca on the 90th anniversary of his assassination, exploring his death as an act of violence whose memory remains painfully relevant today, while reaffirming the enduring significance of his legacy

One of Queergiru’s favorite strands of the program is its focus on historical memory, and on 11 November the panel Uncovering Trans Histories brings together researchers from Spain and the UK to explore trans histories across the Iberian Peninsula and Latin America, from the early modern period to the twentieth century. Their research spans gender practices in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain, ballroom culture, drag king practices, and trans and travesti histories in Latin America. The recovery of lesbian histories will also feature prominently.

This sixth edition of the Festival continues a journey that began in 2021, marked by a steady expansion in both its program and its audiences. Initially conceived as a space dedicated to queer culture in Spanish, the festival has since embraced literature, cinema, theatre, music, performance, podcasts, academic research and debates on historical memory. It has become a meeting point for artists, researchers and audiences connected to Spanish-speaking cultures and the diaspora in the UK.  FCQEL continues to use queerness as a lens through which to examine how desire, bodies, identity and memory have been represented, concealed and reclaimed. From 2 to 26 November, London will once again become a space to recover overlooked stories, bring communities together, and open up new ways of thinking about queer culture in Spanish.