Dua Lipa has interviewed the Madrid-based writer Alana S. Portero on the podcast of her cultural platform Service95. The platform has a reading club, each month is dedicated to a book, and September has been assigned to ‘La mala consumo’, the successful book by Portero, which is now in its 13th edition. Dua Lipa usually interviews the authors of the selected books, and it is Portero’s turn; both of them are linked by their friendship with Pedro Almodóvar, mentioned at the beginning of the interview.
During the interview, Portero tells the author of ‘Radical Optimism’ about her experiences growing up in San Blas during the 80s and 90s. Dua says that “it’s not the glamorous Madrid we usually read about; it’s raw, real and dirty.” Dua and Alana also talk about trans politics, specifically within the contexts of Spain and the United Kingdom, where transphobia runs rampant through misinformation; and they discuss the intersection between gender and class or the importance of family support during the transition.
At the end of her conversation with Dua Lipa, Portero reveals the theme of her next work: “It is a witches’ tale, halfway between Wuthering Heights and Federico García Lorca, and set during the Spanish Civil War. It is a gothic novel.” Portero says that she had always wanted to write a novel inspired by the “southern gothic” style, and that she has finally found the time.
