Imagine you are the most well-known lesbians in a country of 40 million people. Millions of people see you on TV or read about you every week. Yours is the first ever legal televised gay wedding. The idea of you getting married is as big as Ellen DeGeneres marrying Martina Navratilova, plus you both look like models. Then there’s Spanish passion and a great deal of cleavage added in to an already heady mix. It could be enough to send one party off in search of fun, escape and and simpler times.
Before they learnt about you most Spaniards got their impression of lesbians from one of the country’s most popular sitcoms, Aquí No Hay Quien Viva (No One Lives Here). But with you, the attention is somehow different. It helps your career rather than hinders it; in fact it’s what you become known for more than anything else. And then gay marriage arrives in your country, making real the sort of future you had only ever dreamed of.
For Maca Fernández Wilson and Esther García, this is your life. CLICK BELOW VIDEO FOR FULL STORY.
Love Triangle
For Maca Fernández Wilson and Esther García, this is your life – your life as major characters on Spain’s Hospital Central TV show.
A friendship leads to a friendly shoulder massage, then a kiss, then romance, engagement, and finally the marriage of the year in the very year – 2005 – that it becomes legal for you to walk down the aisle.
You are the first legal same-sex wedding ever televised – anywhere – and more than ten million of your countrymen tune in to watch. And you do it in designer dresses to boot.
But the television station that brokered the coverage spends days fielding complaints about the planned broadcast. They decide to push ahead anyway – like your parents, who at first refused your invitation to the wedding because they didn’t accept you were really a lesbian. But the lead up is filled with uncertainty as rumours about your parents’ decisions and weak-kneed TV executives fly around the nation. In the end your parents don’t want to miss the most important day of their daughter’s life. The TV executives don’t want to miss their chance to make history. And thousand of teary fans count down the hours to the big event.
In the end, your wedding turns the TV you are starring in into one of the most-watched programmes of the year. After decades of persecution and invisibility and increasing tolerance your story become emblematic of a new Spain. More than that, and most importantly to you, it is widely perceived as an authentic love story, heralding a bold new era for your community and your country.
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According to the delightfully named Sandra Showtime, editor of EurOut, a European lesbian website, “People got hooked on this story.” Not just a gay community coming to terms with sudden equality in the eyes of the law, but millions of straight observers too.
If it seems a little like a fairytale, the aftermath of the wedding was anything but for this couple. Imagine blowing it all in a one night stand with a man who lands you pregnant. And then having your partner start an affair with one of your associates, which ultimately leads to separation.
Does this sound too crazy for the life of a pediatrician and a senior nurse? Maybe, but for a speculative short term scripting adventure, the Maca and Esther storyline on Spain’s Hospital Central TV drama is paying big dividends. Now the show is into its 18th season, and the tenth of Maca and Esther’s relationship (they rekindled their love after the affair between with the beautiful psychologist Veronica.)
This is a case of writers and audiences discovering that a love story is a love story, no matter whether it’s convention or not. And in Spain at least, love stories draw viewers. Maca and Esther have paved the way for a string of popular primetime lesbian characters on Spanish screens, including Pepsi and Silvia a police forensics duo on Los Hombres de Paco (Paco’s Men). Did I mention Silvia was Pepsi’s sister-in-law when they met?
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WHAT THE FANS SAY
More than any other fictional lesbian characters, Maca and Esther have crossed cultural and language boundaries and given a sense of longevity as well as exoticness when it comes to same sex relationships on Television. The main Spanish language fansite has about 11,000 members, and scores between two and four million visits per month, spawning forums in French, Portuguese, German, Italian, English and, drawing Maca and Esther obsessives from Argentina to Greece; Israel to Italy.
“For me it is striking that their relationship has been treated just like any other heterosexual relation in the series. I can’t believe that they still have the audience’s love and attention. I have to confess that I was one of many who initially placed a bet they wouldn’t last for half a season on prime time TV.”
Ana, Spain
Today, because of the pioneering work of Maca and Esther, or rather the show’s writers and actors – and those characters that followed, Spaniards are quite blasé about the presence of same sex relationships in mainstream culture.
Most importantly according to several entertainment websites, playing gay can now be good for an actor.
Perhaps the true message is that everyone loves a happy bride – and what can beat a lesbian wedding in those stakes? It’s two for the price of one. What is more interesting is the journey the audience takes after the joyous scenes of the newlyweds: with the pregnancy of Maca via artificial insemination, and the withering of the relationship that follows. Instead of bringing the couple together, the stresses and extra work drive the couple apart. Esther even takes her daughter back home to her own mother at one point she is so fearful that the relationship has broken down. As in so many relationships she is torn over how best to put her daughter first.
Only after a great deal of heart-break is the situation resolved. And finally the couple has a second child. None of this is to say the relationship won’t end up in the divorce courts – it’s had more than a few bumps and shows no sign of slowing down.
But whatever the final result, it will remain clear that the audience clearly identified with this relationship, not only because it has the requisite drama and three intriguingly beautiful protagonists. It is a full relationship. It is not censored for the sensibilities of others, or pushed to the edge of the camera or allowed only occasionally onto the screen, as some complained about the character of Dr. Charlotte Beaumont on the Australian show All Saints whose private life was nearly invisible for many seasons of the show. Or, as the actor who played Charlotte, Tammy McIntosh put it “I worry … that she doesn’t seem to have much of a life outside of the hospital.” This is very different form Maca and Esther’s relationship, which has never been of the ‘drunken kiss with a co-worker variety.’ It’s the real deal – containing all the emotions that might be found in another relationship; a true sub-plot in a setting everyone can understand – the local hospital.
Importantly, the characters are also well-rounded. You see them as professionals, as mothers, as daughters – not simply as lesbians. According to the many fan sites that exist across the Spanish-speaking and lesbian communities, Maca is sympathetic and tender, but with strong opinions that she sticks to. Esther is loyal and hard-working, and “ready to give a hug to those who need it.” We see them and their patients in their most vulnerable moments, and because of this it is human values that shine through. These are people who are not stunted by tradition or ideology. They simple exude a (well-groomed) humanity in with all its rough edges and moments of joy. It’s a very good prescription for doubters of the value of same-sex marriage.
Tags: Aquí No Hay Quien Viva, Esther, Esther García, gay marriage, gay wedding, Hospital Central, Maca, Maca Fernández Wilson, Spain
