Nobel Prize winner José Saramago once said, "Garbade shows us humanity where it unfolds"[3] His most well-known portraits include those of Nancy Cunard,[4] King Juan Carlos I, Rodriguez Zapatero, Kofi Annan and Pedro Almodovar.

[9] An avid fighter for the rights of homosexuals, he worked for the American Foundation for AIDS Research (AmfAR) and the Fundación Triángulo [es] in Madrid, where he illustrated texts in various writings such as Orientaciones.

[11] In 2022, Garbade was invited by the Embassy of Switzerland in India to give a lecture on The Queer in Art and Real Life with Curator Dr.Alka Pande, Saurabh Kirpal, Advocate and LGBTQ+ activist and Vivek Raj Anand, CEO of Humsafar Trust.

[12] His wedding (2006) was the first same-sex marriage in Mascaraque, Castilla–La Mancha, Spain Garbade's exhibition Côctel, with contributions from writers such as Rafael Alberti, Vicente Molina Foix, José Saramago, Luis Antonio de Villena [es], Jesús Ferrero and Leopoldo Alas, discusses tolerance in the Convent of San Ildefonso (Toledo).

He co-operated with Werner Bischof and John Armleder at the Museo Reina Sofia, Circulo de Bellas Artes and other galleries in the Swiss weeks of Madrid in 1988.

In 1989, he helped François Lachenal for the exhibition du Greco a Goya, a homage to the works of art from the Museo del Prado saved during the Spanish Civil War in Geneva.