Save this story Save Story Save this story Guitarricadelafuente, the 29-year-old Spanish troubadour with expressive eyes, has spent the past year living a double life, splitting time between his world tour and the international film festival circuit. As a pop star, he croons about gay desire in anthems like "Full Time Papi." And now, as a serious actor in the expected awards season juggernaut La Bola Negra , he plays a soldier discovering his own homosexual inclinations during the repressive Spanish Civil War.
"It's been crazy!" Guitarricadelafuente told me over Zoom from his apartment in Los Angeles. "I was shooting La Bola Negra while I was touring all around. I just feel so grateful for what has happened this year, how I've been able to see my music so synchronized with what I was working on in La Bola Negra ."
Born Álvaro Lafuente Calvo in the small coastal town of Benicàssim, Guitarrica’s stage name is a combination of his last name with the Spanish diminutive for his instrument of choice, the guitar. He earned his first Latin Grammy nomination for his debut album, 2022's La Cantera . And after befriending and collaborating with Troye Sivan , he leaned more fully into his identity on last year's sweaty and carnal Spanish Leather . Then, despite not having acted before, Guitarrica was handpicked by the director duo Los Javis (Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo) to star in La Bola Negra , an adaptation of Federico García Lorca’s unfinished play, alongside a cast that includes heavyweights like Penélope Cruz , Glenn Close, and Elite heartthrob Miguel Bernardeau. In the film, he plays Sebastián, a musician that's forced to join the Nationalist army, where he falls in love with Bernardeau's character, a prisoner of war named Rafael.
Shortly after the movie’s theatrical release, and before it begins streaming on Netflix on December 2nd, the multi-hyphenate joined GQ to talk about his burgeoning acting career, learning from Penélope Cruz, and writing the movie’s centerpiece song, “La Nieve.”
Guitarricadelafuente: I just thought they were crazy. They never saw me act before. They told me, “We've seen you perform live. We've seen you in your music videos.” They approached me with the idea that I would play Sebastián, but without the script being written. It was this blind faith that I felt from their side that made me make the decision and put myself in their hands to do it in the most honest and confident way possible.
There were a lot of rehearsals. We had to study a lot to understand maybe how different people had to live in that historical context. There were many people who had to fight in that war because if they didn't, they would be imprisoned or suffer the consequences. I learned that my grandfather had to live what Sebastián had to live. He had to enroll in the army. He was enrolled by the Franco party and forced to go to war. It wasn't a choice. I was at that time already pretty linked to that era musically because I was listening to Rolando Alarcón, who was a singer who sang a lot of Spanish Civil War songs, and [Federico García] Lorca's "Anda Jaleo." I was also told from the beginning that Sebastián was going to be a musician, or he dreamed of being a musician. I had to do the original song, I had to learn how to play the trumpet from scratch. We would spend many months in Madrid rehearsing and choreographing in a very restricted way because everything happens in this big room, but with not much freedom of movement because Rafael was in a bed and nobody could notice that I was talking to him, so everything had to be very subtle. We rehearsed a lot and we worked a lot on the characterization and the many things also about myself that I could link to Sebastián and many of the parallelisms that I could find.
Yeah, of course! When I started having conversations with Los Javis, I was telling them, "I can't believe that you're talking about all of these matters because it seems as if we were thinking the same way." There was kind of this dichotomy between what Spanish Leather represented and what Sebastián was going through, like the releasing of yourself versus the repression of yourself. Spanish Leather represents this journey of a young gay kid that leaves his beliefs behind and puts himself to the world and discovers his place in the world and where he belongs. There's a discovery of sexual arousal and identification. Sebastián was someone who was not able to question all of that. Questioning would be a luxury because he just needs to be focused on surviving. He didn't have the tools to do all of that or any references around him. There was no room for him to exist. War eliminates that individuality. In "Full Time Papi" and "Babieca!," I thought that there was a lot of investigation of what masculinity meant for me. I was examining what my place was in being a man. I still don't know, and I'm still discovering that, but Sebastián couldn't. In those songs, there's these big hooligan voices you could relate to what you felt, maybe at school with those bullies. It's that aggressive and hostile masculine energy that questions you and that makes you feel weak. If you go through all the lyrics, you could find many resemblances and ways to relate it to the character.
Because that's who I am. I think this is just an extension of what Guitarrica is. This synchronicity is happening and it’s connected with what I'm feeling. It's putting something very soulful to what I'm doing. I thought this acting role was an extension of all of that and me being able to understand and to empathize with the world around me. This is just like an extension of what I feel and what I like to do.
I just love that! Actually, I think that's kind of the main purpose why I have this name as an actor too.
Photo: Wolfgang Tillmans Photo: Wolfgang Tillmans That queer desire you were talking about is tangible in your scenes with Rafael. How did you build that connection and chemistry with Miguel Bernardeau? Those were the most difficult scenes because we were very restricted in everything in the context of the hostility of war. Even though I'm surveilling him, I'm being surveilled by my superiors. They put a rifle in my hands and they said I need to man up. I'm just a kid that came out from his village. He's always been told what to do and he has this innocence and carries self-repression. He's being repressed out of his body, so for you as an audience to recognize that a connection was happening, it had to happen in a very subtle way. There was a lot of physicality between both of them, because you had to see how desire was arising inside of Sebastián and how that's the first time that he sees himself reflected and recognized in someone. Also, Miguel was laid in bed all the time, so they had to be really subtle. We had to find something very intimate, something very powerful and expansive. How can you feel desire if you're being so restrained around you? Like in Lorca's poetry, at the beginning of the movie, the horse that runs by Sebastián was the representation of an untameable desire.
I feel it’s a big responsibility. Ever since Spanish Leather was out and after this movie was out, I received so many messages from people saying, "I resonate with you and I can see reflected myself in you." With messages like that, you suddenly know how important that representation is. There was an absence of that kind of example that I had growing up. I would have wished when I was 16 years old to see this on a big screen as a window of possibility. I remember one of the last times that I saw the movie In a cinema, I saw this 16-year-old gay couple holding hands and crying. People wrote to me when I was releasing Spanish Leather like, "You're helping me feel comfortable in my own skin and to put myself out in the world." That's something that I feel so grateful for that I wish I could've had when I was younger. The reason why I do music is I want to feel understood by myself. I want to feel that what I'm thinking resonates with the rest of the world and feel the feedback from the people. This film was showing how that shame and self-repression didn't allow you to be who you are. That is something that has been passed from generation to generation. I just wish that this representation in the media and on a big scale can help somebody in a remote place see themselves reflected and feel their personal black ball is being lightened. I want them to feel like they're carrying less of that burden.
It was a dream come true. I admire her so much. I would have a magazine cover at my dining table with her face. I would see her growing up in every movie. She's the Spanish queen. I can see myself in Sebastián looking with full admiration at Penélope. You can see that when Sebastian is watching Nene—it wasn't difficult to have that gaze in my eyes. In that scene, she was the most generous. She didn't make me feel nervous at a single moment. She's the kind of artist that carries you with her, and she anchored me so much. She just made it so easy with her generosity and her empathy. I feel she has a very sensitive soul that makes her be able to portray so many roles. She's a real-life actress and she cares about what goes on in the world and will defend what she thinks is right. She's the diva and the artist that I admired since I was a kid and it was a dream come true to be recognized by her.
There were so many topics and important matters to put in that song and to try to be the most faithful to the movie. It was a big challenge. First, I thought that I had to soak everything as an actor and to live that personal journey and see what was going inside of me and what I was perceiving. Also, it was very important to incorporate Lorca as the poet and the artist and how his soul is so present in the movie. It was very important for me to pay homage in my way of writing lyrics and perceiving the world around me and its beauty. Lorca was the one that kind of showed a new way of being. "La Nieve" was one of the characters that appears in the manuscript of La Bola Negra and represents the end of a journey. In the three timelines, the three characters are reaching the end of life and are seeing that death is approaching. They realize that they need to make a decision and to live as they wish.
It's just crazy. I feel grateful to be where we are right now. I just think that if those things happen, the nominations for the film, this will just allow the film to reach more and more audiences. Los Javis said they were done with considering a gay film as niche. They wanted to do a big, gay, epic movie and if these stories can be seen by someone in a remote place and they can see themselves reflected, that would be the purpose of it all. It's not a film that tries to lecture anybody. It's just a film that speaks to life. If that can happen, that will just be beautiful.
I was already starting working on music after shooting finished. I had this obsession with being static and being by myself and lonely to be able to find inspiration. This experience and what my life has turned into in the last two years has made me find a new poetic way and a new way of writing songs in this quick stimulus around me and to feel inspired by it. I feel that to find inspiration in all of this is the way of defending yourself and protecting yourself from all of these things that you're receiving. Even when we finished the shooting of the film, I already started doing new music and new songs. I was already starting to do an album. I'm here in L.A. doing more music. Who knows if what I'm doing right now will resonate with someone else. I just wish to act sometime again because I found something very addictive about it. When I try to approach an album, I just try to be malleable and to evolve and to soak in everything that surrounds me and understand myself and understand the world around me and just try to connect with people. Acting has helped me to do this or feel that I'm able to do this. That's something that I just felt so fulfilled and it was just beautiful.
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