Although his memory is not as sharp as it once was, when looking back, Vicente Llorente, age 71, admits that you could write an entire book about his life. That book would contain more than enough thrilling episodes. “Whatever happens to me, no one can take away the fun I had,” he says. Yet its pages would also be filled with grief and hardship.

Llorente grew up in Madrid, raised by a single mother alongside four siblings during Francoist Spain. As a child, he preferred playing with the girls. While at school, he felt a natural attraction toward the boys. His brothers, however, could not tolerate this. At just 17, Llorente was forced to leave the family home.

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He soon found work at a hotel, and for a brief moment, his life seemed to take a positive turn. But the management discovered that Llorente was gay and promptly dismissed him. Struggling to survive, he began sex work that involved cross-dressing. One night, policemen posing as clients entrapped him, and he ended up in prison. In those days, homosexuality was still a crime. Behind bars, he endured violence, rape, and abuse.

Upon release, he had nothing: no home, no family, no support. All his belongings were what he carried on his back. He lived on the streets until a Christian charity provided him with food and temporary shelter. With their help, he managed to secure a job at a bar and eventually rent a small apartment. Even then, he occasionally returned to sex work to make ends meet.

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Much of Llorente’s adult life became a cycle of precarious employment: fruit picker, baker, and countless other odd jobs. Years of under-the-table work meant that, when he finally reached retirement, his pension amounted to only €400 (about $450), a sum utterly insufficient to live in a city like Madrid. Like many in his generation, Llorente now faces the daunting reality of aging as a poor LGBTQ+ person.

Today, Spain is internationally recognized for its progressive LGBTQ+ legislation, from same-sex marriage and adoption rights to gender self-identification from the age of 17. Since the death of the brutal dictator Francisco Franco 49 years ago, the country has transformed beyond recognition. Yet for many elderly LGBTQ+ Spaniards, the scars of persecution remain deep, shaping their access to both dignity and economic opportunity.

In the U.S., research shows that LGBTQ+ people are more likely to experience poverty than their cisgender, heterosexual counterparts: 17% compared with 12% in 2021. Among older LGBTQ+ adults, a 2017 study found that one in three lives on an income at or below twice the federal poverty level (currently $15,650 for an individual and $21,150 for a two-person household). 

Unfortunately, similar research is scarce in Spain, though the reality encountered by activists on the ground speaks for itself.

Federico Armenteros, age 66, is a prominent and veteran activist in this field. Trained as a social educator, he spent years giving talks on sexual education in high schools. But in his early forties, a colleague made a remark that would forever shift the course of his activism: He said he should focus on the challenges faced by elderly LGBTQ+ people.

“When my colleague told me that, it came as a shock. I didn’t take it well,” Armenteros told LGBTQ Nation. “What is she saying, that I am old? But that comment helped me to shift my perspective and to see the prevailing ageism within the queer community and society at large.” 

“And I started to ask myself, where are the elderly? So I did my research and I got some clarity. I started seeing things. When I went to the bathhouse I paid more attention to the elderly men there. They were in the darkrooms, and I could hear things like, ‘Don’t touch me, old creep,’ or ‘Leave me alone, grandpa.’”

As Armenteros recalls it, he began frequenting places where older gay men gathered, such as the hustler haunts in Madrid and the bathhouses. At the bathhouses, he spent less time in the darkroom and more at the bar, talking with the older men who lingered there. He later met several of them in cafés to continue the conversations and learn about the challenges they were facing, including how ostracised they felt by younger gay men. Those conversations left a strong impression on him.

“I realized that could be me one day and I decided not to wait for society to change but to be myself part of the change I wanted to see,” he says.

The more Armenteros learned about elderly queer people, the more he realized how invisible their struggle was. At the heart of it all were questions about care and the end of life.

“When I started talking with queer seniors, I noticed some patterns,” he said. “They didn’t want to end up in nursing homes, and they were scared of not being able to take care of themselves. Quite a few told me they’d rather die than depend on someone else, and some even said they already had poison at home, just in case. That really shocked me. I do believe people should have the right to decide when to end their life, but in their situation, it wasn’t about choice, it felt like they thought there was no other way.”

In 2010, Armenteros founded the 26th of December Foundation. The name refers to the date in 1978 when the Spanish government repealed the dictatorship-era laws that had criminalized homosexuality. Since then, the foundation has dedicated itself to caring for elderly LGBTQ+ individuals, especially those living in financial hardship. 

For Armenteros, the link between aging, queerness, and poverty is unmistakable: “Poverty pushes you out of society and, little by little, you start to believe you don’t have any rights. You even start to think you deserve it. For queer people of our generation, that message was drilled into us from the start: ‘You’ll never get anywhere in life, you’ll never get married, nobody will ever love you, you’re depraved, dirty, a pervert.’ Hearing that as a kid, as a teenager, as a young adult… it sinks in. At some point, you end up telling yourself, ‘I deserve the bad things that happen to me. If only I had been normal.’ And all of that leaves deep scars: mental health struggles, heavy depression.”

Armenteros explains that within the LGBTQ+ community, different groups of elders have very different paths that led them into poverty in old age. Take lesbians, for example: Because they often didn’t marry, families would pressure them into taking on the heaviest caregiving duties, looking after aging parents or relatives, usually without pay or recognition. The insights from Armenteros align with research, showing that a disproportionately high number of lesbians (over 30%) provide some form of caregiving, particularly to children and the elderly.

Llorente is one of the many older queer people who have received support from the foundation. At the time he first met Armenteros, he was living in chaotic conditions, sharing space with housemates struggling with addiction. The foundation helped him move into a shelter apartment with two other queer seniors. He now contributes a small share of his pension to cover utilities, and he eats his daily meals at a soup kitchen run by the foundation.

“Since I found the foundation, I’ve finally had some peace, something I never had,” Llorente said. “Before that, I went through some really awful places. And just when I thought one was as bad as it could get, the next one turned out even worse. Before I came across the foundation, I was living off my pension, just 400 euros, which I used to rent a room whenever I could. But when the money ran out, I ended up in shelters. They gave us dinner, breakfast, and a bed for the night. For the other meals, I went to soup kitchens. And sometimes, when there was no other option, I slept on the street.”

In 2018, Armenteros launched the foundation’s most ambitious project yet. With an entire building donated by the Madrid regional government, he set out to create Spain’s first LGBTQ+ retirement home. He saw how urgently such a space was needed: many queer seniors felt they had to go back into the closet once placed in mainstream care homes, and as a result, many avoided the support they truly needed. 

After years of struggling to secure funding, amid indifference from both right- and left-wing political parties, the renovation of Spain’s first queer retirement home is finally set to be completed by December 26 of this year. Unlike similar projects abroad, this initiative is a non-profit designed specifically to support low-income queer seniors. But with little political backing, Armenteros had to find a compromise: instead of relying entirely on public funding, the home now includes a number of spots for private residents. Their contributions will help cover expenses and make it possible to offer housing and care to those most in need. 

With a wink, Armenteros points out to some of the particularities of a queer retirement home and the kind of freedom it gives for self-expression.

“I don’t want to end up in some nursing home full of people who roll their eyes at me just for being myself. I want to be in a place where I can talk about c**ks and that kind of stuff without anyone clutching their pearls. A place where we can laugh and say things like, ‘Look at that piece of eye candy!’ or ‘You won’t believe the wild sex I had last night.’ You know, the kind of things you just can’t say in a regular old folks’ home.”

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