First Spanish Bisexual Portal

The Spanish Bisexual Community is moving forward, slowly but with confidence

and pride.

A couple of days ago the first portal for bisexuals (with forum and the possibility for members to create their own profile with photo) was created under the URSL www.zonabi.es. Zonabi.es is a big step in the history of the Spanish Bisexual community since it provides a framework in which a coherent bisexual discourse can be built up, taking into account the different voices from bisexuals living in Spain.

A number of yahoo/facebook groups together with blogs and different home pages already existed for bisexuals in Spain. However a place where the whole community could get together was lacking. Inter alia because of the lack of interest and institutionalised nepotism in the Bisexual section of the Spanish National LGBT organisation (FELGTB), which in principle, is in charge of coordinating Bisexual activities across all the bisexual organisations in Spain. Such coordination is non-existent and even the bisexual information they included in their home page a couple of months ago has been erased.

Therefore the creation of www.zonabi.es responds to a necessity claimed by the Spanish Bisexual Community, a necesity to coordinate joint action.

The Spanish Bisexual community is flourishing nowadays: Bisexual workshops and awareness campaigns are increasing the visibility of bisexuals in Spain, especially because of the outstanding action that certain LGBT student organisations are performing such as Arcópoli (and in a lesser degree RQTR and UAM Entiende).

For example, bisexuals with the bisexual flag could be seen in the events celebrated in Madrid under IDAHO - International day against LGBT-phobia. Besides some open bisexuals have recently appeared in the Spanish television to talk openly about matters that concern bisexuals. The well known book "Getting Bi - Voices of Bisexuals around the World" - is going to be translated in Spanish and published in Spain very soon, being one of the first (if not the first) books in Spanish dealing entirely with bisexuality.

This development is not only focused in the big cities such as Madrid or Barcelona (with the organisation Sinvergüenza). In smaller towns, such as Santa Cruz de Tenerife, the well functioning Bisexual Network within the organisation Algarabía is also creating a portal for bisexuals: www.bisexualesalgarabia.tk.

Thanks to www.zonabi.es and www.bisexualesalgarabia.tk, bisexual networks from smaller towns in Spain will have the possibility to have access to resources to empower themselves to create their own portals in a future.

It is important to keep in mind in this context that even though Spaniards speak many languages such as Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese (Galician) and Basque, and they understand a number of Romanic languages, English is not commonly understood in Spain. Those persons that speak it prefer to read information in Spanish anyway. It is therefore fundamental to have portals that provide information in Spanish, also because the Spanish bisexual community has its own idiosyncrasy, which is better described in Spanish.

This movement in the Spanish Bisexual Community is especially significant now given the fact that "Opción Bi" has been closed. Opción Bi was a well functioning bisexual portal in Mexico that was used by the Spanish speaking world to obtain information and inspiration.

After a couple of years that same sex marriage has been legally approved in Spain, the bisexual movement in Spain is awakening being firmly committed to real change.

Pangea - Copenhagen International LGBTIQ Network - with deep pride congratulates the Spanish Bisexual Community for these advances and it encourages bisexuals from the entire world to support the Spanish Bisexual Community in this initial development.

You can contact them through the URSL/portals that have been mentioned before.

In Solidarity,