Diogo Vieira da Silva on founding Portugal Pride: ‘The main goal is to show LGBTQ+ people have a voice’ (EXCLUSIVE)

Diogo Vieira da Silva is a man on a mission. The 36-year-old Portuguese business leader has been a vocal and prolific activist in his home country for two decades, creating multiple non-profit, LGBTQ+-focused NGOs on top of establishing a successful career. His tireless work to elevate Pride in Portugal makes him a worthy honouree at the PEUGEOT Attitude PRIDE Awards Europe, supported by British Airways.

A pivotal moment came when a teenage Vieira da Silva, who grew up in Porto, witnessed a member of Portugal’s parliament come out on TV. The politician was taking a stand after a popular singer made homophobic remarks during a TV interview.

“I was around 15. I was petrified looking at the TV. I was in shock,” Vieira da Silva tells me. “I said to myself, I will never ever again allow anyone to make me feel so afraid like I was at that moment. That’s how I decided to become an activist.”

The moment everything changed

While still in high school, he helped create a student movement called SEQSO, “Somos Estudantes e Queremos uma Sexualidade sem Opressões”, which translates roughly to “We are students and we want sexuality without oppression”. 

“The movement was focused on demanding better sex education in schools and also on challenging homophobia, LGBTQ+ bullying and the silence around sexuality in the education system,” Vieira da Silva tells me. 

Through that movement he was invited to join Porto’s second annual Pride march when he was 17 years old. 

“I remember saying to my parents, ‘I’m just going to the meetings of the march.’ And only afterwards, I decided to come out to my parents,” he admits.

The campaign came to fruition two years later. “We changed the law, because in 2009, Parliament approved the first curriculum to sex education in school in Portugal.”

From student activist to NGO founder

Following high school, in 2009, at just 19 years old, he established his first NGO. It was named “CASA”, an acronym which translates to “Advanced Centre for Sexuality and Affections”. This three-storey LGBTQ+ centre became a community hotspot, with Time Out magazine listing its events.

While he was running CASA, Vieira da Silva noticed that It Gets Better, a campaign to support LGBTQ+ youth that originated in the US in 2010, had created an affiliate Spanish link with Chile. He reached out to the team in LA to convince them to do a Portuguese affiliation. After six months of negotiations, the American team came to Portugal and agreed to the partnership. Vieira da Silva served as European coordinator of the project between 2016 and 2018, and today he is the president of the General Assembly of Associates at It Gets Better. 

In 2017, It Gets Better held a meeting of the world affiliates at WorldPride Madrid. Seeing the capital city come together for Pride made Vieira da Silva question why they couldn’t do the same in his hometown. Up until that point, Porto Pride had only been a ticketed party that was completely separate from the march.

“I think radicalism is important, but you also need to [be] willing to speak with people that you profoundly disagree [with],” Vieira da Silva explains. “And the main goal of Pride, in my opinion, is to showcase that the LGBTQ+ people have a voice and [to] make other people that are not LGBTQ+ aware of our problems and human rights.”

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This full interview appears in issue 371 of Attitude magazine, on sale in print and digital now. Order Attitude magazine issue 371 in print now, or in digital on the links below on Apple News+ and the Attitude app.