Gay Madrid Guide

Madrid has a lively and quickly growing gay scene. Madrid hosts a huge Gay Pride festival each year, which brings more than a million participants and spectators from around the world. As homosexuality becomes more accepted in the city center, more homosexuals are moving to and vacationing in Madrid each year.

The gay area of Madrid is called Chueca. This neighborhood was a "ghetto" only a few years ago, with rampant drugs and prostitution. Located in the old part of the city, this area has quickly gentrified and filled with middle and upper middle class homosexuals. Chueca is just to the North of the city center and contains the Chueca Plaza and Chueca metro station (where the green and blue lines intersect). Chueca offers gay friendly businesses of all types, including gay-owned hotels and restaurants, gay-friendly lawyers, doctors and travel agents. For Gay tourists, this is probably the nicest and friendliest area in Madrid in which to stay.

During the summer time, Madrid can get very hot. During the hottest months, locals flee to public swimming pools. One in particular, Lago, near the Lago Metro stop, is a gay-friendly public pool just outside of the city. During the winter, public saunas in Chueca are popular and, also, gay-friendly.

There are several print and online guides to gay-friendly spots in Madrid, including bars, restaurants, bath houses and places to cruise. Most of the gay bars are located directly on the Plaza Chueca, where a nighttime stroll will lead you to at least one place with the crowd, music and atmosphere you are looking for. Most bars close at 3 or 4 in the morning, at which point the partying madrileños head just outside of the Plaza area to one of the many gay nightclubs there.

Spain has always been a somewhat popular spot for gay exiles (except under fascism, of course) with the "anything goes" attitude of these loving Latins, Spain welcomes all visitors and residents to its many fun cities.