Arraial Pride: the Gayest Party in Portugal

The Arraial Lisboa Pride is the biggest alternative popular party. Unapologetically LGBTI, organization says "from 4 pm until 4 am Terreiro do Paço is ours!" 

 

 

First of all it celebrates the fact that until a few years ago this would be an impossible party. Free sexual choice may still not be completely accepted, but nothing that compares to what it was.

 

 

This is already the 22nd edition of Arraial Lisboa Pride. It is the largest LGBTI event in Portugal and since 1997 brings uncompromising and cool visibility to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex population. It is a celebration of pride on equality, which takes place in the main square of the city, the entrance hall of Lisbon, the Terreiro do Paço.

 

It is a huge square but in recent years it has turned out to be small for so many people that fills it on this afternoon to evening. The Arraial Lisboa Pride is part of the Lisbon Festivals held in June and is organized by the ILGA Portugal Association in partnership with the Lisbon City Council, the EGEAC (the public company that manages the city's cultural offer) and the town councils of Santa Maria Maior and Misericórdia.

In 2017 more than 60,000 people, of all creeds, colours and orientations, made the party. The entrance is free, only need to get here, all the world is invited. This is the spirit that is intended, all different, all equal, all in celebration.

 

 

There will be music, of course, first of all dance music. We put the spotlight on dj Bill Onair, who maintains a regular collaboration with Lux, Rive-Rouge and Bica do Sapato, and Mr. Mitsuhirato will mix Indie, Disco and Electronic "to generate the essential of the premises, the will to dance ".

Still with the music as background, it will be a must see the Fado Bicha project performance, by Lila Fadista and João Caçador, the voice and instrumentation of this specific fado. Getting inspiration from fado as it was born, at hidden brothels and dark alleys, this is a very twisted kind of music. The Fado Bicha picks on the original fado popular anguishes and dresses it with a new outfit, the anguish, joys and daily life of the LGBTI community. It is assumed as a political project of representativeness, questioning rules and barriers, both social and artistic.

With music always in the background, there will everything to with for this from 4pm to 4am program: a Peddy Paper Out Sciences: Scientific-Kinky; fire & flamenco; zumba and yoga; pole dance; Embroidery for Grandmas or Grandpas or Neither of a Kind; the Arraialito, for children, and the Arraial Maior, for seniors who have not yet realized that they are, indeed, seniors.

 

Come on, come alltogether, this is the idea. Alltogether! At the Terreiro do Paço, from from 23^th 4pm to 24^th 4am. At the beginning, when humankind celebrated the solstice, I guess the party must have been like this.

 

 

More info here.

 

Photos taken from oficial site.