La edad de la ira – Queer Coming-of-Age and Family Trauma in Spain’s Youth Drama

To be honest, I started La edad de la ira thinking it’d be another sensationalist teen murder mystery. But what I found was far more complex—and far more personal.

This series isn’t just about who stabbed whom. It’s about the silent wounds left by family, the masks we wear in school hallways, and the blurred lines between love and survival. The show dives headfirst into toxic fatherhood: a man so obsessed with control that he breaks everyone around him. Marcos and Álvaro, his sons, are shaped in opposition—one seeks escape through conformity, the other rebels and falls apart. The echoes of A Sun are strong here, only reversed: it’s the younger son who fights back, and the older who collapses.

The show uses a shifting-POV structure that actually works: the same scene gains new weight when rewatched from a different angle. A hand on a shoulder, a look in a locker room—they all mean something else when we know what’s coming. And when the kiss finally happens between Marcos and Raúl—yes, there’s a kiss—it’s not romantic. It’s urgent. It’s one boy crashing into another, asking, begging to be understood.

Raúl is the kind of boy you can’t help but adore. Quietly fierce, a little soft around the edges, a little gay-coded in his warmth. He’s the glue in this trio, and it’s obvious Marcos is drawn to him for more than friendship. But Raúl’s eyes wander toward Sandra. And that love triangle is never about possession—it’s about who feels safest to bleed in front of.

The series doesn’t lean into BL tropes or romantic escapism. Instead, it captures the feel of queer adolescence—the confusion, the longing, the fear of naming what you’re not ready to accept.

And let’s talk about the aesthetics. The lighting, the editing, the use of symbolic sound and song. That lakeside dance sequence with Sandra, Marcos, and Raúl? It’s poetic. It’s freedom. It’s the kind of moment that makes you believe teenagers can touch the sky, if only for one night.