Everyone knows her by her stage name, but in ‘Alaska Revelada’, the docuseries that Movistar Plus+ premiered this week, the singer, actress and presenter, a total and transversal artist, strips completely naked, also getting rid of her nickname. In three chapters (titled ‘Health’, ‘Money’ and ‘Love’), directed by Pite Piñas (‘Bosé Renacido’), he speaks openly about his childhood in Mexico, the Movida, drugs and sex and his controversial relationship with cosmetic surgery. He does it like Alaska, but above all like Olvido Gara.
—It has been in the spotlight for decades but chooses this moment to look back, to “tell everything.” Because?
—It’s time because I have health, I have money and I have love, and all these things have to be done when you are well, not when you are bad to see if things are going well for you, which is a way out in the artistic world for which you should never have to throw.
—She has health, money and love, but what is more surprising is what she says in the documentary that she does not have: neither such a stunning voice nor beauty. What makes it special then?
—We are all special in a different way, other things are what the public considers. How many people are there who seem like artists to you, who you like, and others don’t, there’s no way. It is something that is totally beyond your control. I don’t know, we are all special and we have a beauty that someone finds special.
—Loquillo says he has “more balls than many men,” but strong women don’t give you security but uneasiness.
—The women in my life have been so strong… My mother is still alive at 95 years old and 32 kilos, she is a force of nature who goes down to breakfast with her friends at eight in the morning every day thanks to who has a good group that helps make that possible. And my grandmother… is incontestable. I felt emotionally and intellectually diminished. In front of them, I was nothing. I have had to be an adult to find my own strength elsewhere.
—In religion, for example? He was born on the day of Saint Anthony of Padua and whenever he can he turns to the saints.
—I was born in Mexico and there is no religion in the classrooms there. I learned to pray the Lord’s Prayer in English and Spanish, because my grandmother taught me, and when I arrived in Spain I discovered religion classes, catechism and sacred history, which I love, in communion. For me, religion is a home culture. Not acquired by the school, nor by the State, nor by anything. And I have always been very attached to religious imagery, I am a very iconologist. Don’t present me with a religion without images because I don’t understand it.
—When she was little she already went with her mother to London to see banned movies. Is it considered subversive in nature?
—We would go buy things and watch movies. It’s different. And no, I don’t feel like I have a rebellious spirit. A friend of mine says I’m a good soldier if there’s a general. And I need it, if not, I’m going on my own.
—Has freedom been lost?
—It’s not that there was more freedom before, there wasn’t. But each person’s opinions or positions were less questioned. One could be more stupid, and the history of culture is that, a succession of wonders and stupidities one after another. Luckily the nonsense is overcome, but it does not have to be done through censorship or cancellation.
—There are those who, just as they criticize the Transition, also begin to question the Movida. What do you think of this type of revisionism?
—You can say that you wouldn’t have liked to live there, but what is, is and you can’t change it. You can’t tell me what that moment was like because I lived it. You can’t tell me if I was gagged or not because I lived it. I think it is an interested question from certain positions. And that’s it.
#Alaska #history #culture #succession #wonders #nonsense
