General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Veneno

Veneno (alternate title Veneno: Vida y muerte de un icono) is a Spanish biographical drama television miniseries created, written, and directed by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, known together as Los Javis, about the life and death of Cristina Ortiz Rodríguez, the transgender media personality known as La Veneno.¹ It premiered on Atresplayer Premium on 29 March 2020 as one of the first original productions of Atresmedia's subscription platform, ran for one season of eight episodes of about 50 minutes each, and was later broadcast on open television on Antena 3.¹^•² The series is based on the biography ¡Digo! Ni puta ni santa: Las memorias de La Veneno, written by Valeria Vegas and published shortly before Ortiz's death in 2016.¹

Key fact	Detail
Original run	Premiered 29 March 2020 on Atresplayer Premium; final episode aired 25 October 2020¹
Format	One season, 8 episodes of about 50 minutes; drama, biography, LGBTQ themes; rated 18+ in Spain¹
Subject	Cristina Ortiz Rodríguez, "La Veneno", a transgender icon of 1990s Spanish television, from her childhood in Adra in the 1960s to her death in 2016¹
Lead cast	Isabel Torres, Daniela Santiago, and Jedet play Ortiz at different stages of her life; Lola Rodríguez plays the journalist Valeria Vegas³
Production	Atresmedia TV with Atresmedia Series (Buendía Estudios) and Suma Latina, associated production Apache Films³
Awards	GLAAD Media Award for Best Spanish-language Series (2021); Iris de la crítica 2020; Ondas award for best female interpretation shared by the three lead actresses²
International reach	Distributed in the United States on HBO Max; later added to Netflix⁴^•⁵

Spoilers

Subject and narrative

The series reconstructs the life of Cristina Ortiz Rodríguez, who rose to fame in 1996 after a journalist interviewed her in Madrid's Parque del Oeste, where she worked as a sex worker, and who then became a regular on the tabloid talk show Esta noche cruzamos el Mississippi, where her bold humor and glamour made her a household name in 1990s Spain.⁶^•⁷ The narrative runs from her harsh childhood in Adra, Almería, in the 1960s, when she was misnamed "Joselito", through her media rise and abrupt decline, to her death in unexplained circumstances in 2016.¹^•⁵

A second narrative thread follows Valeria, a young transgender journalism student played by Lola Rodríguez, who never understood why people called her by a name that was not hers, and who decides to write a book about Ortiz, the biography on which the series is based.⁸^•³ Through this double structure the series narrates the history of the LGBTQ community in Spain from the 1960s to the present, beginning at a time when transgender people occupied the lowest social rung and following the fight for recognition.¹

Production and casting

Calvo and Ambrossi led the writers' room, which included Elena Martín, Claudia Costagreda, Ian de la Rosa, and Félix Sabroso, with Valeria Vegas supervising the scripts.¹ Pepe Ripoll and Txavi Guallar are credited as directors alongside the creators.³

Trans casting. From the start, the creators wanted transgender actors to play transgender characters and ran a three-month casting process to find actresses who could portray Ortiz at different stages of her life; they also ensured at least one trans person worked in every production department behind the camera. "LGBTQ stories should be told by LGBTQ people, because they are our stories," Ambrossi told Time.⁶ The three lead actresses, who come from Granada, Málaga, and Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, prepared the role with a coach to work on the Adra accent.¹

Release and reception

The first episode premiered on Atresplayer Premium on 29 March 2020 and made the series the most-watched content on the platform with its debut alone; the platform later reported that the series had broken all of Atresplayer Premium's audience records and multiplied its usual subscriptions.⁹^•¹⁰^•¹¹ Before the platform release, the first three episodes were edited together as a feature film and released theatrically, topping the Spanish box office in September 2020.⁶ From episode three onward, new chapters were released weekly on Sundays.¹² The final episode, "Los tres entierros de Cristina Ortiz", aired on 25 October 2020.¹

In the United States, where the series arrived on HBO Max in late 2020, it became what El País called a small phenomenon, and The New Yorker included it among its 14 best series of 2020, describing it as "a dreamlike reconstruction of the life of La Veneno" whose storytelling is "anarchically exuberant, slightly surreal".²^•¹³ The series was later added to Netflix.⁵

Awards and impact

The series won the GLAAD Media Award for Best Spanish-language Series in April 2021, only the third Spanish fiction to receive the award after Élite (2019) and Las chicas del cable (2018).² Its other honors include the Iris de la crítica 2020, the Ondas award for best female interpretation shared by Daniela Santiago, Isabel Torres, and Jedet, three nominations at the Premios Feroz, a nomination for the Queer Palm at the Festival de Cannes, and a MIPCOM Diversity TV Excellence Awards nomination.²^•¹³^•⁴

Cultural impact. Academic studies have treated the series as a turning point in Spanish audiovisual representation of trans people, noting that a project centered on trans representation with a respectful social perspective was practically unheard of in Spanish fiction.⁷ Researchers have linked its reception to a breaking of the spiral of silence around trans issues and an evolution from ostracism and fetishization toward normalization, although one semiotic analysis concluded that, except for certain positive aspects of Valeria's character, the series still perpetuates a canonical construction of the trans collective.¹⁴^•⁴ A media-coverage study found positive results, citing political advances after its broadcast and the international projection the series achieved through HBO Max.¹⁵ At the end of the first season, the creators announced a second season.¹⁰

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › International serial drama and telenovelas › Telenovelas and Latin American/Iberian serials › Spanish serial dramas

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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