Thousands turned out on the streets of Madrid Saturday for a Gay Pride parade dedicated this year to pioneers of the LGBT+ cause, amid growing fears of fresh repression with the rise of the far-right in Europe. Several thousand people converged on the Spanish capital’s main Atocha train station for the start of the march. The slogan for this year’s march was “History, struggle and memory” and participants marked 50 years since the Stonewall riots in New York in 1969 which were the foundation of the gay rights movement worldwide. Catholic Spain was at the time was controlled by dictator General Francisco Franco and homosexual acts were illegal. Thousands of gays were shipped off to rehabilitation centres or even jailed.