Since she was little, she felt the need to investigate, to look beyond what is seen and heard and to connect the dots, to create synapses to combat the intellectual silence "of that Alicante of my adolescence, which culturally was a wasteland." The writer and journalist Leyre Marinas sips her beer, while Head on, by Jesus and Mary Chain, accompanies vermouth hour at the Bar. "And that's despite being a terrible student in high school, but at the same time I was a voracious reader," she recalls, regarding those formative years, honing herself with her mother's rich library, finding in Oscar Wilde, Truman Capote, and Brett Easton Ellis her first great cardinal points.
When she was fourteen, her family moved to Torrevieja and, through a series of coincidences, in that town that at first seemed like a morgue for the soul, she found her first soulmates. A wild group of thirteen girls (and one boy) with whom she shared a classroom "and with whom we had brutal aesthetic, literary, and musical affinities." There she also met Raquel, like her, hedonistic, guided by aesthetics, restless, with a hunger for the world. She became her best friend and, from then on, everything got better.
"After high school, she and I went to Murcia to study Advertising and Public Relations, and it was a wonderful stage, because very interesting things were brewing there: concerts, talks, exhibitions, books…", continues Leyre, who confesses that she is still sentimentally linked to that city, "although not as much as what I feel for Ireland, where I lived for a year with a girlfriend, and where I would go back to live tomorrow if I won the Euromillions!", she laughs.
Moving to Madrid to study for her master's degree in Sociocultural Analysis at Complutense was her next step, "to begin my research career." Her final project, on how the Glam Rock phenomenon of the 70s appropriated the aesthetics and significations of femininity –"which I hope one day to be able to turn into a book for public sale"– opened the doors to her doctorate. And that's where some problems began.
Where is the vindication?
Leyre Marinas does not remember her next stage at the Madrid university with special affection, "nor in Madrid, which is not a city I like to live in." She proposed a thesis on the invisibility of women in a pop culture very often centered on the male figure. Something that, for her, has increased over the years. "Until the early 2000s, there was still a demand in the pop sphere. There was an underground that brought to the table issues such as abortion or feminisms, which could even sneak into MTV, into the mainstream. But now it's no longer like that. There are issues that are completely silenced, even at an alternative level. My thesis questioned this."But she clashed with "academic trends, which, driven by certain interests, led my thesis advisor to try to get me to investigate abuses in the music industry, an environment I am unfamiliar with." Although that wasn't all. "During my time at Complutense, where I even taught, I saw cases of abuse and sexual harassment of female students by professors. Cases that other people bravely brought to light and that impacted me greatly emotionally."
In 2023, she finally managed to present her thesis. "But I didn't want it to stay only in the academic field, so I started to move it around to publishers who showed interest, and I opted for Dos Bigotes, which is a label I admire very much." Thus, Fucked feminist fans: the origins of #MeToo from musical pop culture saw the light. A review of feminisms in pop where Madonna, MTV, Riot Grrrls, or Harvey Weinstein fit. A further twist, the collaboration on queer groupies for the recent book-fanzine Cosas bellas por las que matar, coordinated by Carmen Torreblanca.
A hopeful relationship
"Barcelona gives me life, I like its sensibility and it has everything I need: Mediterranean spirit and a certain northern spirit with which I connect a lot." In love with its streets and bars like the Madame Jasmine on the Rambla del Raval or La Casa de la Pradera on Carretes street, the writer and journalist sips the penultimate gulp of her beer and adds: "my relationship with Barcelona is essentially hopeful."She arrived here three years ago and, after being in a research group at the UAB and having worked as an Equality and Diversity consultant for a Human Resources company, she is looking for a job while writing and tying up loose ends about dissidences and silenced voices. "The important thing is to be able to stay here despite the expats and the increasingly abusive rental prices," she concludes, taking the last sip of beer.
–What doesn't have abusive prices and unites this city is our gastronomic offer. In case you want to eat something… We have tapas, raciones, menu…
Leyre Marinas' eyes and mouth smile. In the background, All I want by Echo and the Bunnymen and, around, the lively local crowd.
"I think some tapas, or some raciones if you share with me," she replies after thinking for a few seconds. "And, of course, another beer," she adds, ready to continue conversing for as long as necessary, at the bar.