Cristina Llanos, the former lead singer of Dover, has granted her first interview in ten years to El Mundo, timed to the release of her diaries, “The Night Fell and No One Could Save Me.” In it, the singer expands on several topics from the book and speaks about her relationship with music, the health issues she shares with her sister Amparo, and her political views.
“Dover saved me at the last moment,” Llanos says, recalling the connection with the audience as a balm during the darkest years of her life. She also explains that she began to suffer when she lost the ability to rasp her voice, something that was very hard for her to accept. Despite everything, she does not miss performing on stage. “Health hasn’t given us a break, neither my sister nor me,” she asserts.
The interview also revisits some of the hardest episodes of her life, from the sexual assault she endured as a teenager to her father’s mistreatment and the death of her brother Mariano, who died after receiving a beating. Llanos acknowledges that she still often thinks about suicide. “There are times when life stops making sense,” she says, though she also maintains that enduring allows moments of peace to return.
The interview also returns to her political positions, especially her criticisms of the Trans Law and her defense of Israel. Regarding the former, Llanos maintains that “being a woman is not a feeling; it is a biological reality” and she calls for bathrooms specifically for people with fluid gender identities. In her argument she blends biological sex, gender identity, and the social dimension of being a woman, and she refers to a hypothetical transgender woman as a “maromo.” A pejorative term that seems anchored in another era.
Llanos rejects being defined as a “cis” woman—“as if this descriptive label would make me less of a woman”—and she insists that she is “a woman, from birth until death.” She also states that many transgender men do not enter the men’s bathrooms because “they are afraid of men.”
On Israel, Llanos believes there is a “collective moral rule” that consists of hating the country and criticizes what she sees as generalized demonization. The singer states that she does not follow social networks, but she is convinced that there is a campaign to turn the whole world against Israel.
