Raising Voices is firmly grounded in the trials facing teenage girls and their parents everywhere.
It could be any high school anywhere in the world. In this case, it’s the fictional Martin Baussen Private College in suburban Madrid, and all is not well there. Somewhere behind its ordered façade, graffiti scrawled on a toilet wall protests that “high school is not a safe place”. And the brilliantly conceived and executed examines the various ways in which this is true. Especially for female students.
Assisted by superlative performances, the depiction of Alma and Greta’s affection for each other is utterly convincing, their bond enriched by a mutually supportive loyalty. An air of danger pervades the series – which occasionally even draws on several of the horror tropes that dominate the often-confronting US series – but it’s quelled by their friendship and the survival instinct they share, even if that sometimes fails them.
Sometimes, the line is strategically blurred, as with the case of the sexual encounter initiated by a stoned and drunk character with a trusted friend and then regretted afterwards. “A real friend would’ve taken me straight home,” she says later. And she’s right. But both are kids still learning about their sexuality and about how complicated rights and wrongs can be.
Doubts also form around the school’s history teacher, Juan Lopez Sanchez , right from his first appearance, which has him telling his class a risqué story about the 19th-century king, “Ferdinand the Desired”. Alma certainly believes Berta , an old friend who comes back into her life with a story about him that makes sense.
Greta’s home life is less traditional, her parents supportive and concerned but not so involved. Distracted by financial pressures, they’re reliant on income from the cannabis crop cultivated in the cellar by her older brother, David , to avoid losing their home, a situation that creates stresses for everyone in the family.
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