Berkana, Madrid

About Berkana

Madrid's landmark queer bookstore, and a genuine piece of Spanish LGBTQ+ history. When Mili Hernandez opened Berkana in Madrid in 1993, after stints around Gay's the Word in London and the Oscar Wilde Bookshop in New York, it was the first openly gay and lesbian bookshop in Spain, and one of the first LGBTQ+ businesses to put a storefront on the street in what was then a rundown Chueca. It's widely credited as the spark that turned the neighborhood into the gay heart of the city, and Hernandez went on to found the Egales publishing house as well. More than thirty years on, the shop still carries one of the deepest catalogues of queer writing in the Spanish-speaking world, with fiction, history, theory and art across Spanish and international titles, and doubles as a cultural hub for readings, signings and talks. For a visitor it's not just a shop but a stop worth making: the place where modern gay Madrid arguably began, still trading in the heart of Chueca on Calle de Hortaleza.