This brilliant Spanish drama goes to the heart of sexual assault

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 Raising Voices (Netflix) examines the various ways in which this is true. Especially for female students.

Nicole Wallace as Alma and Teresa de Mera as Berta in a scene from Raising Voices.Credit: JAVIER DEL CERRO/NETFLIX

Based on Miguel Sáez Carral’s 2021 novel of the same name and co-written by him and Isa Sanchez, the eight-part Spanish series begins amid a scene of high drama by the school’s arched entrance. Determination fixed on her face, 17-year-old Alma (Nicole Wallace) is erecting a banner that warns: “Beware. A rapist is hiding in there.” Students and staff gather inside the school building to watch. A teacher observes, “Alma’s causing issues again,” and the principal (Daniel Ortiz) calls the police.

At which point, the series takes us back four months to January 2018, and to the series of events leading up to Alma’s stand. Across several seamlessly linked time shifts, it introduces us to her closest friends, Greta (Clara Galle) and Nata (Aicha Villaverde), to their parents, several other students and the teachers who are to play key roles in what follows.

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 Euphoria (2019-2022, Binge) – but it’s quelled by their friendship and the survival instinct they share, even if that sometimes fails them.

Like their peers, they’re regularly presented in places of transition: walking along pathways at school or in the local park, or along bustling corridors, and in the streets near their homes. Buses and cars also provide regular settings. They think they know where they’re going, and they sometimes do, but it’s an obstacle-ridden route and their futures remain uncertain, even at the end.

At the same time, the series ponders the mindsets and circumstances that can lead to the sort of situation that’s emblazoned on Alma’s banner. The violations in the series take a variety of forms, some more immediately destructive than others, but all seriously consequential. Looks, gestures and snide asides are one form of harassment; threats and physical abuse are criminal.

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.

The violations in the series take a variety of forms, some more immediately destructive than others, but all seriously consequential.

More often than not, though, the transgressions are clear. Nata is an insecure teenager who thinks that school sporting hero Alberto (Gabriel Guevara) is the cure for her insecurities. She obsesses over him, tolerates his narcissism, his verbal aggression towards her privately and publicly, and his willingness to exploit her neediness and adventurousness.

Three of his jock friends resolve to rough Alma up when she decides that the time has come to take a stand. She’s told afterwards by Nata that she’s “being way too intense” about their threats. However, as we see in a flashback to her early childhood, Alma has always been a fighter, determined to make her own way in the world, a rebel in waiting.

Doubts also form around the school’s history teacher, Juan Lopez Sanchez (Ivan Massagué), 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 (Teresa de Mera), an old friend who comes back into her life with a story about him that makes sense. Alma takes her campaign on Berta’s behalf to social media, which becomes a recurring battleground in the series, but then doubts emerge and she’s forced to reassess her position.

The parents have their parts to play too. Even if they aren’t directly involved in what’s happening at the school, their way of thinking is seen to play a significant role. Alma’s clashes with her middle-class parents, Vero and Pablo (Ruth Diaz and Eloy Azarin), will be familiar to anyone who’s raised a teenager.

But, while they’re sometimes at a loss as to how best to deal with what Pablo sees as Alma’s “contempt, rejection and indifference”, they’re eminently sympathetic in their attempts to do the right thing by their daughter. Greta gets it right when she enthuses about Alma’s mother as “the GOAT” and observes in response to her friend’s dissent, “I guess being a mum can’t be easy a lot of the time.”

Greta’s home life is less traditional, her parents (Fernando Barona and Elsa Chaves) 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 (José Pastor), to avoid losing their home, a situation that creates stresses for everyone in the family.

Alma’s mother’s progressive view of the world emerges through their mother-daughter chats: “We have to think about the consequences of our actions,” she sensibly advises Alma. Her eager involvement in an imminent women’s rights march through Madrid creates a telling contrast with Nata’s mother (Irene Anula), who regards the demonstration as pointless.

“Beware. A rapist is hiding in there” reads the banner that Alma (Nicole Wallace) erects at her school in Raising Voices.Credit: Netflix

Her mother-daughter chats with Nata also follow a different agenda. With Nata’s father reduced to a largely irrelevant presence in their home, her mother counsels that the best way of dealing with boyfriend problems is to forgive, forget and move on. “Sometimes brushing off silly behaviours and looking the other way is best in order not to lose them,” she tells her daughter. “As a woman, you’re going to have to concede certain things. Because that’s life.”

As the title indicates, the series’ focus is firmly on how important it is for young girls and women not to suffer in silence. It isn’t concerned about pondering the factors that might turn boys and young men into “violadores”. Nor does it need to. Its only flaw a slightly over-the-top denouement, Raising Voices is firmly grounded in the trials facing teenage girls and their parents everywhere.

And its positive notes ring true. The sequence in which Alma joyfully bounces along the street after learning of David’s interest in her is delightfully infectious. And the series’ skilfully measured tone not only points to how life can turn sour for its characters but also to the ways in which their intelligence and their resilience might enable them to deal with the downside.

While it’s entirely fictional, Raising Voices does drop its characters into the actual 2018 Women’s March through Madrid, linking it to Alma’s individual act of protest. And it also makes specific reference to a couple of real-life cases. Establishing the name Coleman Miller as her online identity for posts designed to attract attention to her cause, Alma draws on Greta’s information about two young American women, Daisy Coleman and Chanel Miller, who were victims of shocking sexual assaults, news of which eventually reverberated around the world.

The disturbing documentary, Audrie & Daisy (2016, Netflix), recounts the tragic fate that befell Coleman (and Audrie Pott), and Miller’s 2019 memoir, Know My Name: A Memoir, and I Am With You (YouTube), the short animated film she made with Emily Moore later the same year, articulate her anger at what happened to her.

Directed by Eduard Cortes, David Ulloa and Marta Font, Raising Voices is smartly shaped, evocatively balanced and emotionally powerful. Driven by a quiet fury and a poignant empathy, it deserves to be high on every viewer’s must-watch list.

Raising Voices is on Netflix.

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