Ramón Martínez reviews LGBT stories from History.
Why do lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and trans people never appear in History books? We have been told again and again in class about the love entanglements of great authors and historical figures, but only when they were heterosexual. No one has ever told us that there were also hundreds of LGBT people who, on many occasions, managed to love and express themselves with some freedom and left testimony of their experiences. We know the intimacies of the Catholic Monarchs, but we know little about the lover of Isabel la Católica’s father. We study the names of all of Lope de Vega’s women, but we have never been told about all the romances Federico García Lorca experienced. We have the right to know all the stories still hidden behind official History.
In 2018 Ramón Martínez began publishing a series of “threads” on Twitter in which he detailed the life and love adventures of all those #MariconesDeAntaño. This book collects all those narratives and adds many more, to recover the historical memory of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and trans people; to recover the stories of LGBT characters and authors who are also part of History.
“We have always known that our history was there, fragmented and hidden, but there nonetheless, waiting to be reconstructed. And that is the gift Maricones de Antaño gives us: the gift of a memory we never inherited. [...] Thank you, Ramón, for the dedication and passion you feel for our legacy. Thank you for the patience, dedication, and talent with which you have placed this book on our shelves. And thank you for always, always being willing to keep rebuilding.” From the prologue by Cristina Domenech (author of Señoras que se empotraron hace mucho, 7th edition in less than a year).
