Two Supreme Court rulings have destroyed the opposition of political parties, ultra-Catholic groups and some courts and tribunals to the flying of rainbow flags in public buildings every June 28. The resolutions put an end to years of decisions that have relegated the LGTBI insignia precisely on its day of vindication and establish that this flag is not a partisan symbol nor does it lead to confrontation, but rather it is a sign of equality. Decisions with which the Supreme Court shows that political parties, but also some judges and territorial courts have prevented the placement of these flags on public buildings during Pride based on an erroneous argument.
The judges of the third chamber have settled the matter by studying two cases of two flags placed in public institutions for Pride 2020: in the Zaragoza City Council and in the Valladolid Provincial Council. Two cases that came to court after lawsuits from Christian Lawyers, the association that, among other things, acts as an ultra-Catholic spearhead against the visibility of the LGTBI collective, both on the facades of public buildings and in textbooks or the television. Almost always through litigation but, sometimes, even threatening political leaders with the bench.
Christian Lawyers monopolizes the judicial action against the presence of these flags, but other ultra groups such as HazteOir came to collect signatures to demand in 2019 that the Madrid City Council not hang a badge that they considered “sectarian.” The argument, whether on a banner or in a judicial document, has always been the same for years: the LGTBI flag is not a neutral symbol and cannot, therefore, be on the façade of a public institution.
The two rulings of the Supreme Court definitively destroy these arguments, although Christian Lawyers has already announced that it will appeal to the Constitutional Court with the intention of taking its claims to Strasbourg if necessary. The judges explain that this flag “does not break the neutrality” of a public administration, nor is it a partisan symbol nor does it “advocate any type of confrontation.” On the contrary, they add: “It identifies with widely shared values, such as those of equality.”
This decision of the third chamber of the court destroys an argument that in recent years has served as a basis for city councils and parties but also for courts to prohibit, sometimes even with precautionary measures, the display of the LGTBI flag on the day of Pride intended, precisely, to vindicate the rights and visibility of the group. That in 2020 the Supreme Court itself issued a ruling that prohibited these flags in public buildings, something that these two rulings prove false.
Four years ago the same court established in a ruling that only official flags could hang in public buildings. He said this after resolving the specific case of the Canarian town council of Santa Cruz de Tenerife that raised the flag of the seven green stars, considered one of the symbols of the Canary Islands people. That flag, the Supreme Court then said, “is not the official one, so it cannot be attributed the representativeness of the Canarian people.”
Lawsuits and even complaints for prevarication
That ruling, which at no time mentioned the LGTBI insignia, was the main support for the judicial offensive by Christian Lawyers and other leading actors of the Spanish ultra-Catholic spectrum. Lawsuits with requests for precautionary measures in Zaragoza, Cádiz, Valladolid, Huesca, Madrid or the Balearic Islands. On occasions, as happened in Guadalajara, Valladolid or in Cádiz, threatening the mayor with a complaint, accusing him of prevaricating and asking for his disqualification for not complying with what that 2020 Supreme Court ruling had said.
Some of those petitions failed. It happened, for example, that same year in the Madrid town of Alcala de Henareswhere a court rejected the argument and reminded Christian Lawyers that Spanish city councils had even waved Manila shawls throughout their history. They did not succeed either when the representatives of the PSOE hung the LGTBI flag in the Cortes of Castilla y León last year. But they triumphed in other cases with the judges supporting a criterion that is now revealed to be erroneous.
It happened in Cádiz shortly after the Supreme Court handed down that ruling on the Canary Islands flag. Another court reached a similar conclusion in the case of the Zaragoza City Council. And more recently other courts have reproduced this argument to sanction the presence of this flag in the Madrid town. from Ajalvir or even on the façade of the municipal groups building of the Madrid City Council. The Superior Court of Castilla y León also banned it from the façade of the Valladolid Provincial Council.
At one point the argument of the Supreme Court’s ghost ruling of 2020 gained so much momentum that the demands of Christian Lawyers were not even necessary. The presence of PP and Vox in the municipal governments, or the alliances between the two, led to this failed doctrine being used to prevent the placement of the LGTBI flags in the month of June. In Toledo, for example, the mayor came to ask the local police to remove a flag placed on the bench by PSOE councilors.
The two Supreme Court rulings known this week destroy both the legal argument and the formal covering of the ideological argument. The LGTBI flag, say most of the judges in the courtroom, not only does it not promote any type of confrontation but it is a symbol of equality, a “widely shared” value. And to decide whether or not this insignia can hang from a public building during Pride, we do not have to go, as has been said all these years, neither to the 1981 law that regulates the use of the Spanish flag nor to its own. 2020 ruling on the Canary Islands case. That is not applicable to the case.
That debate had to do with the fact that the Santa Cruz de Tenerife City Council used a flag “different from the statutory one” and that also had “partisan significance.” You didn’t even have to go to the law of 1981. And it was nothing comparable to placing a flag like the LGTBI on Pride Day, which “was not placed to replace or subordinate to the official flags and banners, nor is it a sign or symbol of partisan significance and it does not advocate any type of of confrontation.”
Placing this flag on the dates in which the group claims its visibility and its rights, says the Supreme Court, “in no way contradicts the demand for objectivity of the Public Administrations, nor does it break the neutrality that they must maintain, but rather it is part of the line of actions that must be carried out to promote equality.” An argument that clashes head-on with what has been decided by various courts and tribunals in recent years, but also with what has been repeatedly alleged by public administrations governed by the PP with the presence or support of Vox.
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