This paper presents the results of the Spanish fieldwork conducted within the European project CLICK – Connecting Families, Educators and Policymakers to Improve the Well-Being of LGBTIQ Children Through an Intersectional Approach (CERV-2024-DAPHNE). The project involves six European countries – Spain, Lithuania, Hungary, Italy, Portugal and Bulgaria – and aims to strengthen the well-being of LGBTIQ children by connecting educational institutions, families and policymakers across diverse socio-political contexts.
Grounded in an intersectional, feminist and child-centered framework, the CLICK project explores how adultism, heteronormativity and cisnormativity shape LGBTIQ children’s everyday experiences within both formal and informal educational settings. Drawing on the notion of childhood as a social category, the project understands children as active agents whose voices and experiences are often silenced by adult-centric paradigms. In this sense, the research seeks to deconstruct dominant narratives of childhood vulnerability and instead foreground children’s capacities for agency, resilience, and resistance.
The study combines qualitative and quantitative methodologies, including focus groups with adolescents (aged 14–18), interviews with educators, rainbow families and policymakers, and a cross-national survey to teenagers. The analysis is structured along four main axes: (1) children’s needs and perspectives; (2) educators’ and families’ needs; (3) well-being and resilience; and (4) community resistance.
Preliminary insights suggest that schools are ambivalent spaces — simultaneously sites of vulnerability, recognition, and empowerment. Educators and families play a key role in mediating institutional responses, while community-based networks often compensate for institutional gaps by fostering inclusion and emotional safety.
By situating these experiences within broader European debates on anti-gender backlash, democratic regression, and educational inclusion, the paper discusses how collective practices of care and solidarity emerge as forms of resistance.
