Daniela Santiago: "I want to see trans women working in a Mercadona, in Zara and in Primark"

She just turned 40 and is ecstatic. Last year she celebrated her birthday with Pedro Almodóvar. She has been the image of Roberto Cavalli. This summer she premieres a film in ...

Ranking The 100 most influential LGTBIQ+ in Spain 2021
Trans Law Transsexual artists speak: "I'm fed up with trans, I'm retiring as an activist"

She just turned 40 and is ecstatic.

Last year she celebrated her birthday with Pedro Almodóvar.

She has been the image of Roberto Cavalli.

This summer she premieres a movie on Netflix.

Her life smiles so much at Daniela Santiago, catapulted to world stardom by her interpretation of Cristina Ortiz in the series

Veneno

, that she needed a book to explain herself.

My Little World

(Planet) she opens up about her origins, her transition, her bad times and her disappointments.

She tells everything with gratitude and openly.

The actress Daniela Santiago, in the center of MadridÁngel Navarrete

Why such a book now? I wanted to reconcile with myself.

I've been hearing for almost two years that I'm the actress of

Veneno

I am Daniela Santiago and I really wanted to make it clear who I am, who my family is, what I think.

I want people to really be able to look me in the face knowing who I am and to get so much Cristina out of their heads.

I am very grateful, the character has made me very happy, but I am not her.

I also want boys and girls to have the life example of women like me.

We continue fighting to be respected.Do you feel that she is not respected?I notice that she has once again awakened a hatred towards us, when we have already traveled so much.

They point at us again.

I watch the news, the homophobic murders, the beatings.

People have to start to understand that we are real women, that it hurts us when they insult us, that we have a family.

Everybody wants respect.

We too.

We deserve it in our own right.

Have you noticed an uptick in aggressiveness? Yes, you just have to see what my dear sister Carla Antonelli faces every day.

It's a daily bomb.

There are groups that only try to do harm.

There is a lot of violence on networks, it is something that has to stop one day.

We have to be able to go out on the street without fear.

And there is fear. In the book she explains how her mother saved her several times.

She paid him the 30,000 euros for the sex change operation and got her out of a bad streak of many drugs. A mother is always a refuge, an armor.

She is the person who holds you up when you stumble.

In my case, my mother encouraged me and thanks to her I did not collapse.

She was the first to wrap me up when the time came when I felt that my body and my head were not in the same harmony,

which is always a very critical moment for all of us who go through it.

I broke my heels dancing, but I had to survive and could never have saved enough for the sex change operation.

It is very hard for those who do not have the support and help to get their true identity.

There are many people who have committed suicide for not getting it.

Because they think they will never get it.

For them it is also the book, so that they feel that they can.

The book is also so that many mothers can read it and know how to help their children, so that everything is a little easier for them. She has decided to tell how hard the postoperative period was. I remember that my goal was the operation.

Some people don't need it to feel fulfilled, I do.

I thought that after the intervention everything would be done.

What he didn't know was that a whole new world was going to wake up afterwards.

That I would have to learn to know my new sex, where to touch to feel.

And that's when insecurities come to you when it comes to having sex.

You look in the mirror and there is nothing that reminds you of your male body.

But it's always weird.

Luckily I had a boyfriend at that time, we were already together when he had a penis and when I made the change, he continued with me.

We loved each other very much and that was the least of it.He says that his first sexual experience after the operation was like losing his virginity all over again.

I just didn't know how to do it, or how I had to spread my legs.

I told my boyfriend: "You take me."

I had to turn off the light because it had been a short time since the surgery and it was not in the most beautiful way,

it was still settling in.

The first time we did it I felt that the bed was very wet and I remember thinking: oh my, it can't be that I'm lubricating so much.

Then, turning on the light, I saw that the bed was full of blood.

It was shocking.

But in a way he amused me and to take the iron out of him I said: 'Look, my first period!'

It was very hard.

But it was also the most beautiful thing that ever happened to me because I was finally able to give myself the way I really wanted.

Then you get used to it and adapt. Does the operation mean saying goodbye to the male orgasm and learning the female one? When you have surgery, they assure you by contract that you will not stop feeling and that you will be able to have orgasms, because what they do is a reconstruction.

But then you have to work on it, of course.

My doctor, Iván Mañero, who is the best, told me: Daniela,

we have already done the work, now you have to continue it.

We are the third sex: women have one, men have another, and transsexual women have another.

Vaginoplasty leaves you with all the nerve endings, but then you obviously have to do some masturbation work and have sex with your partner to get to know yourself, stimulate yourself and learn how to reach orgasm again.

Having surgery is not summed up in 'I put on a vagina and that's it'.

It is a long process. In one of the chapters she confesses that one of her most special relationships, the one she had with her boyfriend "the Catalan", ended when her mother-in-law found out that she was a woman. shemale

After going to eat every Sunday at her house for a year, I had a very, very, very beautiful love.

We started the relationship in a special way,

I was in the rebellious phase where I thought I didn't have to go through life telling everyone that I had been a boy.

So I decided not to tell him because it was going to be a one night stand.

Then we fell in love, I didn't want to have a relationship with lies, so I confessed it to him.

We started something very nice, I felt very integrated.

His family was very religious, his parents were the typical traditional marriage of deep Spain, of those who think of procreating.

For a year I came to believe that the mother might have sensed something.

She started bringing up the kids thing with me all the time, and when I finally told her that she was a trans woman, she made me feel like a monster.

The mother of the person you love.

It was horrible.

He made me feel horrible.

He was very ugly and I wanted to tell him because somehow I had to make peace with myself.

Not everything has been a bed of roses For many years she felt like "others' doll" because they invited her to parties all the time.

She affirms that the Madrid night "does not leave a puppet with a head".

Is it so cold? The Madrid of that time was different.

Working through the night was wonderful.

The parties before too.

But there comes a time, when you feel like you're just an entertainment for them to look at you for a while, when you ask yourself: what the hell life do you have?

The Madrid I speak of in the book is not the Madrid of today.

There was no information today, we were not really respected.

In the past, if you had a nice physique, you fit in with society.

But if you were a typical trans, you couldn't even enter the places where I worked.

It was all face or death.

The physical has always played a lot, both for and against.

thank god i was lucky enough to fit in physically.

I was always a pretty girl, and younger.

Many friends, colleagues and sisters did not have that life.She admires Irene Montero but she says that she does not feel represented by any political party, not even by Podemos?Many things still have to be done.

To see a game that really represents us, a change should be noticed.

We trans actresses have hit it hard and we are succeeding in our own right, but what I want is a change at the labor level, of real inclusion.

Transsexual women have many problems when it comes to renting or buying an apartment.

I want a party that really helps those trans women to find a job, whether they are tall, short, ugly, beautiful, more qualified or less.

I want a job reinsertion plan for trans people,

They have a very high unemployment rate.

And I haven't heard it yet.

I want to see trans women, also those who do not fit into the canon of beauty that we consider acceptable, working in the neighborhood greengrocer, on an airplane, in a Zara, a Mercadona or a Primark.