Inés Hernand arrives late at the bar in the center of Madrid where we are meeting, walking from her house, but she tells us every five minutes on WhatsApp where she is going and what she is missing, and when she finally appears, in a hurry, she apologizes profusely. She comes radiant, freshly made up by a professional at home for the several work appointments she has ahead of her today, but she offers herself generously and unhurriedly to the conversation. She has been on the other side and knows that an interview does not go well if one of the two parties does not turn themselves in. She is a born communicator.
I could be your mother. How many times has she said to someone my age, “Ok, boomer?”
Look, I’m a millennial because I was born between 1982 and 1997, but age is only one piece of information. Being young is a prism, an optic that results from being contemporary in the time you live in. Say ‘ok, boomer‘It’s like telling you to shut up, and I’m not saying it: I want to listen.
At 31 years old he is not so young anymore, I also tell him.
It depends what you evaluate. I feel absolutely youthful, especially in the emotional sphere: we are all children and we should know how to enjoy it. What has changed a lot is how we are socially conceptualized. We are children of perpetual precariousness. We are in a liquid society, so we want it all fast: fast food, fast fashion, fast relationships. Before, the commitment came at 30, now, now that doesn’t happen: either because you can’t, or because you don’t want to, or because of both. And none of that is free, financially or emotionally.
There are also young people praying the rosary in Ferraz [sede del PSOE en Madrid] against amnesty. Maybe generations have to do with class, as well as age.
You have found Pandora’s box. They want to sell us that there is a middle class because you have a iPhone, and not. You are your context. They see their privileges threatened and go out to what they believe is to defend them. It’s good that they have discovered social movements, but I think they don’t go out so much to demonstrate, but rather to let off steam and have a laugh.
Would you go out for drinks with them?
Of course. I go out drinking with absolutely everyone. I am a humanist and I would like us all to be able to reconcile through words. I look at Ferraz’s with a look like a zoo. Of course I would go out with them, not just for the laughs, that too, but because I want to understand them and for them to understand me.
In other words, it doesn’t ‘cancel’ posh people.
The posh are my favorite urban tribe. They know how to have fun like no one else. Right now I am in a privileged economic position, after having experienced precariousness since I left home at 18 due to disagreements with my parents, but I am not declassed. Now, when I go to one of those hyper-posh restaurants, I love them, and I say how can you not want to shield this, bastards?
Why isn’t it declassed?
Because I care about the rest of the social fabric and I use my speaker to continue putting things that seem very important to me in the public debate. What is classist is that the rest of you sweat your balls.
Don’t you get tired of so much activism?
No, I carry it in the pit of my stomach. It also goes by season. After the elections I ended up devastated. But I can’t give up, it has to do with my personality. It would be impossible for me not to report something unfair. Of course, on the weekend I talk about rags, or about guys, or about a series. But there is always something that makes you jump. I myself, sometimes, tell myself: I’m already giving the fuck up. I’m sorry already.
From 0 to 10, what is your degree of mobile addiction?
I can’t give you a 10, because I use it a lot to stay connected professionally, but I can give you a 6 or 7. Now we are slaves to it, it dominates our desire because the algorithm is designed to offer you cerebral Doritos, and get you hooked. That is why it shows us aspirational bodies, aspirational goods, aspirational relationships. The revolutionary thing is seeing each other, staying, touching each other. Right now, I’m single, as soon as I see that someone may interest me in an application or social network, I prefer to meet, because between that, the Botox, and the filters we are losing each other.
How much do you care about the image?
I’m not a stranger. The yoke of aesthetics is very fallacious. There have always been handsome and ugly. I have a big ass, and no matter how much surgery I have, I won’t be able to have a certain body. But I am a defender of aesthetics and I also tell you that if your frown or rictus bothers you, get Botox or acid before spending 50,000 bucks on therapy, but don’t stop therapy if you need it. Neither Botox nor acid are going to fix you. More friends and less Botox.
Have you hit it off with Mercedes Milá, your partner in ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about’, despite their 40-year age difference?
Wow, Mercedes has a very strong aura. She is extremely intelligent and, while she relentlessly scans what is in front of her, she is loving and generous. Beyond this professional union on Spanish Television, I am going to take Mercedes as a friend for life.
Well, you will always have the law degree as ‘plan B’.
Now my membership card is as if I were carrying a Toni 2 coaster [célebre local de copas de Madrid] in the portfolio. It helped me understand the Ferraz kids, because I lived with them in college, and to know how to read reality and society, everyone should take some Law in all majors…
Now that you’re older, do you get along better with your parents?
The truth is, no. In the early stages of my life there were situations of abandonment, of feeling that I was not their priority, and I have made the decision that seems least painful for me: not to have any contact with them, for 7 years. I have to preserve myself and get away from something that is harmful to me. I don’t want to have anything to do with those people now or in the future. When they get older and the severe downturn hits, let’s see how we can address it in the most aseptic way possible. It sounds horrible to have to talk like that about parents but it is reality, because they did not do the same with their responsibility towards their daughter.
I feel like crying when I listen to it.
They would fit me too. Human beings are selfish, we must analyze ourselves, these people did not work for it and believe that everyone is guilty except them. . In exchange, I have had a great grandmother. And I have built a family of friends from childhood to date.
How much therapy did it cost you?
About 6,000 euros and four years, since I started earning money when they hired me at TVE, and until now. It was the first thing I did, before moving to another apartment: pay for therapy and a radiofrequency treatment for cellulite.
Live the contradictions.
I wanted to give myself that luxury. I am absolutely imperfect and that is what I believe gives me certain value. It is impossible not to incur hypocrisy in capitalism. Everything is super hypocritical, everything is disgusting, and recognizing it, at least, puts you on the path to trying to change it.
GENERATIONAL ALLIANCE. Inés Hernand (Madrid, 31 years old) paid her way through law school by working, among other things, as an employee of a fast food chain after becoming independent from her parents at the age of 18. Later she practiced law “in a precarious way” and gained thousands of followers on her social networks as a legal disseminator, political activist and comedian before TVE signed her for the program ‘Gen PlayZ’, on its youth digital platform, where she addresses issues such as precariousness, mental health, feminism or the LGTBI cause. After her popularity skyrocketed as the presenter of the mass phenomenon ‘Benidorm Fest’, and of the podcasts ‘Dulces y saladas’ and ‘We will come out better’, public television has chosen her again to co-present, along with Mercedes Milá , ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about’, a space for interviews, reports and meetings between generations in prime time. That, the audience, is still a mystery.
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