Further in the interview, she explains how being closeted is a universal experience. “Everybody hides something, everybody is embarrassed by something (…) You don’t need to be queer or trans or gay, lesbian, etc. to understand the importance of being yourself and how painful it is to live inside a closet.”

Her debut novel, Bad Habit (La Mala costumbre in Spanish), draws inspiration from the people she grew up around, especially the women. “The genealogy, the heritage between women, for me is everything. I am the product of my mother, my aunts, my neighbors and the women who were my second mums, women who worked in the street, prostitutes, who taught me a lot of beautiful things.”

She goes on to explain how queerness offers a new way of using traditional terms: “One of the best things to be queer is that we can use the traditional terms like mother, child, son, brother, sister, sibling, etc. and accommodate this to our lives and we can be mothers, we can be daughters we can be sisters in the same day, with the same person.”

Alana S. Portero (Madrid, 1978) is a Spanish writer, poet, playwright, and trans activist. She studied Medieval History at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and co-founded the theatre company STRIGA. Her poetry collections include Fantasmas (2010), Irredento (2011), La próxima tormenta (2014), and La habitación de las ahogadas (2017). In 2023, she published her acclaimed debut novel La mala costumbre (Bad Habit), a powerful coming-of-age story about a trans girl growing up in 1980s and 1990s Madrid. Widely translated, the book established her as one of the most significant new voices in contemporary Spanish literature.

Alana S. Portero was interviewed by Elisabeth Skou Pedersen at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in August 2025.

Editor and producer: Astrid Agnes Hald.

Camera: Rasmus Quistgaard.

Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2025.

Louisiana Channel is supported by Den A.P. Møllerske Støttefond and Ny Carlsbergfondet.