Plaza de Pedro Zerolo

Beneath this square once stood a Capuchin convent, the Convent of the Patience of Christ, built in 1639 to atone for an auto-da-fé. When it was dissolved in 1836, the plot was turned into gardens and began changing names in step with politics: Bilbao, Ruiz Zorrilla, Vázquez de Mella. Each regime left its own. The last name was written by the street itself. After Pedro Zerolo’s death in 2015, a citizens' campaign gathered more than 80,000 signatures asking that the square carry his name. A Socialist councillor and president of the FELGTB, he was the one who convinced prime minister Zapatero to include marriage equality in the party’s platform; the law passed in 2005, the same year he married Jesús Santos. The square beats at the heart of Chueca, the neighbourhood that became the centre of Madrid’s LGBT life in the nineties, and today it is a regular gathering point for Pride.