São Paulo’s 30th LGBT+ Pride Parade filled Paulista Avenue on Sunday with large crowds dressed in Brazil’s green and yellow, turning the day into a public show of national color at one of the city’s biggest events. Thauan Libarino, who attended the march, said he was proud to be Brazilian and proud of its culture.

The colors were more than decoration. Many participants wore them as a statement against Bolsonarism and, in some cases, in support of the World Cup, even though organizers did not ask people to dress that way. The result was a parade that looked festive on the surface but carried a sharper political message underneath.

That message was heard from the start. The march began in the morning on Paulista Avenue with speeches against the far right, criticism of declining sponsorships and calls for voters to back candidates who defend LGBTQIA+ causes. Parade director Matheus Emílio said the celebration is always open to representatives of the executive and legislative branches regardless of ideology, and said it is one of São Paulo’s major cultural landmarks.

Yet two of the city’s most visible political figures were absent. Mayor Ricardo Nunes did not attend, and Governor Tarcísio de Freitas was also away from the event, a gap that stood out because the parade had been described as open to officials from any political camp. That made the green-and-yellow shirts do double duty: a nod to Brazil, and a pointed rejection of the politics many marchers were there to challenge.

For the parade’s 30th edition, the clearest signal was not the size of the crowd, which organizers did not put a number on, but the way the crowd chose to be seen. The colors of the flag, carried through a Pride march in the heart of São Paulo, gave the day a different tone and left the political meaning of the event hard to miss.