Barcelona Pride 2024: Advocating for LGBTI+ education

Every year in Catalonia, the LGBTI+ community celebrates Pride, an almost month-long celebration of events, talks, demonstrations, and more, culminating in the big Pride demonstration or Parade in Barcelona, on Saturday, July 20th. Barcelona Pride Month is not only a celebration of the freedom to be yourself but also a moment when the community reminds everyone of the work that still needs to be done by focusing on one specific theme. This year, the main theme of Barcelona Pride is LGBTI+ education, under the title “Education in Sexual and Gender Diversity: A pending subject”. Organizers and activists are calling for a more inclusive school curriculum, diversity training for teachers, and for schools to function as safer spaces. Lorcan Doherty joins host Lea Beliaeva Bander to chat about the need for diversity-focused education in the classroom. We hear from Katy Pallàs, a longtime queer activist and former teacher about the PEER project, which stands for ‘Programa Educatiu Escoles Rainbow,’ an initiative that seeks to make schools more inclusive. We also talk to Olga Sánchez, a teacher at the Sant Felip Neri School, one of Barcelona’s Rainbow Schools, about her work, and Teo Pardo, a biology teacher and trans man about him using his own lived experience as part of teaching diversity. This week’s Catalan phrase is “paper mullat”, which literally translates to “wet paper” and means useless or not worth the paper it’s written on.  Get in touch with the podcast team: [email protected]