The portrait
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The first trans woman to win an award at Cannes for her role in “Emilia Perez”, the Spanish actress, nominated for the Golden Globes, has always believed in her inner strength.
What is immediately surprising about Karla Sofía Gascón is that everything seems to follow a sort of obviousness. She arranged to meet at the bottom of her house, avenue Illusion. “Ilusión” is one of those untranslatable Spanish words, a sort of favorable predisposition towards a project, a perspective. Tight jeans, strappy Texan boots and a long white wool coat, she gives her definition: ““Ilusión”, it is that midpoint and indefinable between joy and hope.” She takes us into her comfortable residence, a square of a state-of-the-art building. We cross a patio with swimming pool and games for children (“the only problem here is the screaming kids!”), before landing in a large hotel-type lounge, adjoining a spa, a gymnasium and a cinema room. The setting is as impersonal as this town of Alcobendas, a dormitory town with tree-lined avenues and Soviet amplitude where “she” was born “he”. When Karla was Carlos.
We can’t help but marvel at the magnitude of the jump. First, the young boy, Carlos, son of a printer father, then a gardener and a housewife mother, for whom the most exotic horizon was the popular beach of Santa Pola, in Alicante, where the little family went to the summer aboard a Seat 600 before going there
