Gilda Love, the drag performer who became a fixture of Barcelona’s nightlife, has died in the city at 100, shortly before her 101st birthday. Known offstage as Eduardo Rondón, she was regarded as Spain’s oldest drag performer and spent decades performing in the city’s El Raval district.
Born in San Fernando de Cádiz in 1925, Love’s life took her from Andalusia to Paris and, eventually, Barcelona. She worked in Parisian cabaret venues, including Madame Arthur, before arriving in Barcelona in 1967. Inspired by Rita Hayworth’s film Gilda, she adopted the stage name that would become familiar to audiences.
Love performed at El Cangrejo and Bodega Apolo, and also appeared at Bodega Bohemia. She shared the stage with performers such as Carmen Picot, known as La Wernof, and Carmen de Mairena. Her career unfolded against a backdrop of discrimination and personal hardship: she faced family rejection and violence, while also working as a cleaner to support herself.
By day, Love worked as a cleaner; by night, she performed live, singing songs such as “Colorete.” In her later years, financial difficulties led her to rely on social assistance. The documentary Cantando en las azoteas, directed by Enric Ribes, brought her life and Barcelona’s disappearing nightlife culture to a wider audience.
Renewed invitations to perform in her final years brought wider recognition of Love’s contribution to the city’s cultural history. She continued to appear onstage even as remembering lyrics and monologues became more difficult. In doing so, she embodied a generation of performers who helped shape Barcelona’s nightlife.
Love’s story reflects the discrimination faced by LGBTQ+ performers across decades, as well as the gradual change of Spain’s social field. Her legacy lives on in the venues where she performed, while the film documented her life and helped bring wider recognition to diversity and artistic expression in Spain. The city’s changing social fabric has also featured in coverage of the rise of far-right parties in Catalonia’s parliament, amid continuing debates about identity and inclusion.
