• PSOE, Ahora Madrid & Ciudadanos unite to overcome PP opposition
• Zerolo led FELGTB federation during difficult years of Aznar administration
Madrid’s municipal authorities have cleared the last hurdle and finally approved the renaming of the city’s Plaza Vázquez de Mella in the city’s Chueca neighborhood as Plaza Pedro Zerolo, in honor of the late-Spanish LGBT activist and politician Pedro González Zerolo.
Zerolo, who died in June of pancreatic cancer, was a lawyer, Madrid municipal council member and former president of the FELGTB (Federación Estatal de Lesbianas, Gais, Transexuales y Bisexuales), Spain’s national federation of LGBT organizations. He was also a member of the Federal Executive Committee of the Spanish Socialist party (PSOE), where he held the position of Secretary for Social Movements and Relations with NGOs.
A final hurdle to rename the plaza in Zerolo’s memory was cleared when an objection that had been raised by the conservative Partido Popular (PP) with Madrid’s Central District junta was defeated by a combined vote of representatives of the PSOE, the Podemos-backed Ahora Madrid coalition of parties and activist groups and the centre-right Ciudadanos party.
Born in 1960 in Caracas, Venezuela, Zerolo led the FELGTB during a period when Spain’s LGBT movement came under strong attack from the PP under the administration of former Prime Minister José María Aznar. Following Spain’s legalization of same-sex marriage during the PSOE administration of José Luís Rodríguez Zapatero, in 2005 Zerolo and partner Jesús Santos were married and lived together until his death in June 2015.
Read the Full Story in Spanish at DosManzanas.com >>
