These itinerant celebrations, called ' escarramão', or ' esparramão', used to include pantomimes with racy scenes, where some of the participants were dressed as women, and other as men. About 1620, the ' fachonos', the baroque equivalent of modern drag queens, organized big parties in the Gaia Lisboa, the gay Lisbon. The archives of the Portuguese Inquisition in Lisbon preserve information of the so-called ' danças dos fanchonos' from the beginning of the 17 century. On the contrary, historian Rictor Norton considers unlikely that such a subculture would appear fully formed, and thinks that it was actually the increase in surveillance and police procedures that brought to the surface an underground culture that had not been visible up to that moment. Scholars like Randolph Trumbach consider it is the moment when gay subculture appears in Europe.
'Molly' or 'macaroni' from the 18th centuryīy the end of the 17th century, a gay subculture is documented in Europe, with cruising areas, bars, parties and balls, cross-dressers, and slang.
