Leticia Dolera (Barcelona, 1981) has been achieving one success after another since she played Ángela, a student in the series Leaving Class. More than two decades have passed and now the Catalan actress returns to an institute (but not to the fictional 7 Oaks), and she does so as a psychologist to treat a victim of bullying.
The Sandbox is a six-episode series that highlights bullying in adolescence, a problem that affects almost two students per classroom, and will premiere on Sunday on Neox and will also be available on Atresplayer. This is an initiative promoted by the ColaCao Foundation, the Higher Sports Council and the Young Sports Foundation.
“It is a series that tries to understand what happens to a boy or girl when they suffer bullying and also to those who witness it,” the actress explains to this newspaper. And she adds: “I think it has a brutal social value and should be used as an educational tool in schools and institutes where they lack resources and means to address this problem. Because two talks a year about bullying is not enough. A subject should be taught on human values, feminism and sexual violence.” She trusts that one of the pillars of the new Ministry of Youth and Children is precisely to combat bullying.
The sandbox is directed by Daniel Romero and has been created by Victor Pedreira, Pedro Rodríguez Pérez and Nuria Gago. “My role as a psychologist is very small, almost testimonial, but I was very excited to be in this series because it is the first fiction project that my great friend Nuri has written and being able to accompany her has been very nice,” says Leticia Dolera.
But in addition to the great friendship between these two actresses, which they often show on their respective social networks, the series especially touches Leticia Dolera, who suffered bullying as a teenager and had to change schools. “I had a very bad time and so did my family, but neither the school nor the teachers dealt with the issue, because at that time it was not called bullying.”
“At first I didn't explain it at home, because I didn't want them to suffer, until it became unsustainable with phone calls and graffiti on the school door. It was very hard, because I was 13 years old, my period even stopped and I ended up in the hospital –she confesses–. And it all started by defending a kid with an intellectual disability.” He assures that after changing centers he never had contact with his harassers again: “I don't even remember their names.”
That dramatic episode has shaped Leticia Dolera's personality, “because wounds influence the way she sees the world,” she says. Hence her commitment to feminism, mainly: “I think that if they give you the power to appear in the media, like now, you know that you have a responsibility.”
He currently lives between Barcelona and Madrid. She is preparing the casting of Pubertat, a series that she has written for TV3 set in the world of human towers about sexual taboo in adolescence. “I will start filming next summer when the kids are on vacation. It will be bilingual, because that is how Catalan society relates.” She explains that she will also have a role, that of a sociologist who returns to her town and reunites with the family she disowns, especially her father.
The second project he is preparing is the direction of the play Marcela. “It is the monologue of Don Quixote by the shepherdess Marcela and it is very current although it was written in 1605. I have realized that Miguel de Cervantes was a proto-feminist,” he warns. The play, starring Cecilia Freijeiro, with whom he worked on Perfect Life, will premiere in March at the Cervantes society theater “built on the site where the printing press that printed the first Don Quixote was.”
But Leticia Dolera has more projects because “curiosity is one of my driving forces in my life, which has to do with my profession, and my work, which is a deep interest in the human soul.” Thus, after the success of her first book Biting the Apple, she is already considering ideas for a second one, “but I don't have hours in the day.” And in the future she would like to film the third season of Perfect Life, “when our faces have changed more and I suffer a new existential crisis,” she jokes.
