A Natalia Lacunza (Pamplona, 23 years old), the sweet candidate of Operation Triumph who didn’t win the TV contest but whose name is the only one that Spain can remember its edition (the first after the “Amaia nuclear bomb”) loves to go dancing dark electronica and drums and bass at your favorite nightclub. This is what he shows on his new album, it must be for me which he takes on tour in Spain, full of digital textures. While occasionally picking up one of the pieces of Sushi passing the revolving bar of Akihibara, an offbeat Japanese restaurant in Madrid inspired by the neighborhood geek par excellence of Tokyo, where fans interrupt her from time to time to ask her for selfies, she says that “when she was little” her mother played her the Carla Bruni album. Two decades later, her tastes, in every possible way, have evolved so much that she doesn’t even recognize herself anymore: “When you’re young you take on a lot of things inside that you then have to deconstruct without a hitch”.
Interrogate. You didn’t like dancing before?
Answer. I’ve always liked that! But now, I discover the club culture, which even if it does not seem very safe, it is quite the opposite. There are rules that you have to follow strictly, very, very specific, and as soon as you ignore them, they send you home. Since I was very dwarf, I dreamed of being a dancer in musicals. When I talked about it, it always happened that a friend’s mother said to me: “Yeah, but what do you really want to be? Come on, ma’am, for starters, don’t ask a nine-year-old girl what she wants to be when she grows up, and second, don’t treat my dream like it’s not legitimate. Then over time I realized that I really didn’t imagine anything else for myself and even when I started going to university my instinct told me that I had to go there.
P Cast?
R Well, when I got there, I thought, “I’m going to do two newscasts here.” I saw people going to class and I didn’t identify with anyone at all.
P It is curious that despite the clarity of his vocation, he said that at the end of Operation Triumph she felt that people loved her “for nothing.”
R It’s just not a format that really stimulates your creativity. People start to know you a little bit when Big Brother and there you don’t show your own credit, your own integrity. So when I came out, I thought I had to earn everything I had achieved prematurely. And then I started wondering if it was really worthwhile because I didn’t necessarily feel beautiful or incredibly talented. I tend to self-sabotage, you panic. I think it’s ingrained in my DNA.
P Didn’t they support her at home?
R My parents supported me a lot in my intention to dedicate myself to music but even if I was always a very nice girl, very educated, who always got very good grades, there were also a lot of expectations towards me. And suddenly, it turns out that I did not have a specific sexual orientation, because I am bisexual, and this resulted in an overall image that was different from what was expected of me. This is where things can go wrong, because you start to see yourself as insufficient…
P A very feminine feeling, on the other hand.
R Yes, the “I have to play a role”. As a child, I no longer had a very clear identity, I dressed as a boy, crazy and said very happy: “I look like Tarzan, I’m going to take off my earrings”. When we played, I was always the dad, the brother, the father… When I started to be a little more aware of gender roles and to see what I had to accomplish as a woman, it took at a time in life when I was not yet formed.
P Who helped you make the big change?
R Well, an amazing therapist, which was hard for me to find, don’t believe it. The first one I went to was an older man and I had a feeling he wasn’t going to understand things about girls that I was ashamed to tell him. During the first session, he said to me, “What you have to do is be happy to meet you, that’s the only thing you need, because you can get what you want. Trust is a value”. And I thought, for that, I go to the bookstore and buy a book of Mr Wonderful. You have to trust your instincts more because often you are told that you are crazy and then it turns out that you were right.
P How come your group is only made up of girls?
R Well, I was tired of seeing young pop girls accompanied by studio musicians who have been doing this all their lives and who leave in different vans. I said to myself, “I want a camp rock”. I spent the day surrounded by men and I wanted to be around girls my own age and I thought to myself: if it’s in my hands, why shouldn’t I do it? And I did it, but not for a political question but for an almost selfish and practical question, to be comfortable. When I met them, it was a turning point: I realized that there were good people in the world who would really love me for who I was. They opened my eyes to happiness.
P Would you say you are a young wake up with “ecoanxiety”?
R The truth is that I am very disappointed with the system in general. I’m very worried about LGTBIQ rights, of course, and of course I’m very worried about climate change, so much so that sometimes I can’t even think about it. But I think that before giving an opinion I would have to read a lot more books. What am I going to say to a man who has 50,000 factories and who dominates the world?
P You said that cancel culture was born out of a sense of powerlessness in the face of systemic gender abuse. Are you okay with yourself?
R Totally. Justice does not work as we think it does. You can’t talk about whatever you want so calmly or tell about something that happened to you because they’re suing you. Or they start sending you threatening emails.
P Why do you think there are so few girls in gangs?
R It’s starting to change. There are, but they get less hype and less industry support. We also have the culture of shame and modesty, much more involved within. Although I think if you’re a 14 year old boy it’s easier to start playing the drums than if you’re a girl, because you see all these bands of guys and you get excited. We ran out of references.
P And are they as important as they say?
R Of course, they are very important! For example, what Amaia did was an inspiration to face my own project. Or maybe I wouldn’t have had so much conflict in my sex and love life if I hadn’t felt like shit when I was young and had a 20 year old bisexual aunt reference on the television.
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