In the late 1920s and early 1930s Berlin became for a relatively brief period of time a beacon for LGBT culture.
That history, narrated in many books by Christopher Isherwood and translated into a Hollywood movie (Cabaret, 1972) and TV series (Babylon Berlin, 2018), is well known and represents a short window of relative tolerance quickly closed by the ascent of Nazism to power in 1932-33.
However not many know that in parallel to that of Berlin, another window of relative tolerance opened at the same time a long way from Germany, precisely in Barcelona.
Barcelona’s alternative and LGBT scene one century ago was not in the Eixample, but rather in the Raval, the then-called Barrio Chino.
Here the scene focused in one of the most deprived areas of the city, the Raval, which at the time was known as Barrio Chino / Barri Xino (in English: the Chinese Quarter), although the name hasn’t got anything to do with China or Chinese people: it was given by a journalist who compared the area and its crime-ridden status to New York’s Chinatown.
The Raval has always had a very troubled history; born in the middle of the 15 th century as an enlargement of Barcelona made possible by an external new city wall, it was even then considered an ideal space to divert and confine ‘socially undesirable’ people.
With the onset of industrialization, the then mostly suburban area quickly became home to a number of factories and was extensively urbanised to house the same people who worked there.
The existence of a large proletary class, the proximity to the port and the evident insalubriousness of the area quickly became a synonym for crime, prostitution, contraband and drug trafficking. And exactly this combination attracted a very large number of people who felt they could do here what was not allowed or simply frowned upon elsewhere.
La Criolla’s customers were a mix of bohemian types, thieves, prostitutes, militaries and all sort of other alternative kinds
In 1925 a new dance hall opened in Carrer del Cid 10, very close to the Drassanes, a stone’s throw from the iconic statue of Christopher Columbus. La Criolla was a very revolutionary cabaret, and not just because it was notoriously frequented by the many anarchists living in the area, but because its customers were a mix of bohemian types, thieves, prostitutes, militaries and all sort of other alternative kinds. A magazine at the time defined the venue as “the aristocratic centre where you find the soldiers of the nearby quarters of Atarazanas, marines, single workmen, bus ticket clippers, pickpockets, vulgar thieves and inveterate drunks who end up drinking some more and end up tracing a political programme at the rhythm of a Charleston’.
What was going on at La Criolla? Whilst we cannot say that it was a gay venue in the form we intend it today, it must have been very resembling of Berlin’s most famous cabaret of the same time, the Eldorado, with its heady and suffocating mix of sweat and tobacco smoke. Absinth, morphine and cocaine were omnipresent at La Criolla.
It was common to find men dressed as women wearing full make-up and flamboyant wigs. Many offered themselves for sex and could in fact use some private cabins available in the venue. The cabaret shows at la Criolla featured many outrageous acts for the time, like the transformist Bertini, who had people constantly wondering whether he was indeed a man or rather a woman.
Another popular act was a mysterious character named La Flor de Otoño ( Autumn’s Flower in English), who used to perform onstage in full make-up and was known to be at the same time a convinced anarchist, a practicing homosexual and to have a huge cocaine addiction: his life was immortalised in a 1978 film which was one of the first films with a LGBT theme to be produced in Spain after the repression during the Franco dictatorship. All this outrageous entertainment and the uninhibited dancing also performed, made La Criolla the place to go for anyone looking for a truly transgressive and sexually ambiguous experience. The venue had a VIP section and a private office which featured windows disguised as one-way mirrors so that the privileged guests could observe the main areas without being seen. There was even a secret passage leading to a back street, which of course could be used in case of any troubles or to usher in and out celebrities who did not want to be seen arriving or leaving.
La Criolla was the real inspiration for Jean Genet’s Querelle de Brest
The French writer and poet Jean Genet was a very loyal customer of La Criolla and it is known that he prostituted himself there.
