"When my kids ask me about breasts, I tell them they made croquettes in Vall d'Hebron."

BarcelonaSometimes the most sincere friendships are also the most unexpected. Yolanda Fuster, Patrícia Moya, Aïda Cerdanya, Loli Guart, and Íngrid Icra met after suffering from breast cancer. The disease brought them together, but the bond goes much further. "Our conversations don't revolve around cancer. When we see each other, we talk about our children, about life," says Fuster, and Icra adds, "And about sex." They are in their 40s and 50s, and a few months ago, they saw how their experience with the disease was transformed into a play, Women of Radio, written by Cristina Clemente and directed by Sergi Belbel. Clemente –author of productions such as Lapland (2019) and A comprehensive therapy (2022) – infiltrated this collective friendship to build the characters of three women who on stage play Àngels Gonyalons, Sara Espígul and Sara Diego. Women of Radio It premieres at La Villarroel on March 22nd after a successful tour of several theaters across the country. They have already seen it and praised it: "It's a show that touches you deeply, and it made us laugh a lot," emphasizes Icra.

Making a comedy about cancer without offending or causing pain may seem daring. "I wanted to write about the subject because of a mother from the basketball team where my daughter plays, who had suffered from it," explains Clemente, who connected with this group of friends through Yolanda Fuster. They received it enthusiastically, eager to show the world a reality that has been—and, for many people with cancer, still is—distorted and made invisible. The preconceived idea that receiving a cancer diagnosis is a death sentence condemns women and those closest to them to the abyss.

Most of them found themselves in one of the most intense and exhausting moments of their lives, when they were working and had young children. Like Àngels Gonyalons' character, some endured it in silence to protect themselves and their family. "I couldn't tell my mother. My sister had died six years earlier from colon cancer. I didn't want to make her suffer," explains Guart. She went through the illness doing everything possible to hide it. "I had radiotherapy at seven in the morning, went to work until five in the afternoon, and then took my daughters to birthday parties. I wore baggy shirts because my breasts were burned and bare, and I hoped no one would touch them because of the damage they were doing," she recalls. The show has changed her outlook: "I realized I kept quiet for too long."

A husband who is like "a ficus"

Knowing how to react and support others when the "cancer bomb" explodes in the home isn't easy. "Couples also experience pain, so psychologists are needed to bring the family together and help them cope. But right now, this is a service that very few hospitals have," Clemente points out. The experiences speak for themselves. "When I told my ex-husband I had cancer, he spent the whole afternoon crying in bed, saying he couldn't get up, while I went to Hospital Clínic for treatment with my parents. I had a partner who suddenly didn't do anything; he was like a fig tree," Icra explains. Others were luckier, while some, like Moya, went through it alone. "I felt like the most miserable person in the world for not having a partner. Who would take care of me? Then the psychologist told me that, in 85% of cases, the man ends up leaving the woman. I thought, 'Well, it's better to be alone than in bad company,'" she recounts.

The show also reflects how, socially, there's still a need for a lot of awareness and a lot of fighting against misinformation. They've heard it all. "They even told me it was pink cancer, the best cancer I could have," says Icra. "There are phrases that are damning," adds Moya. "There's a lack of empathy," emphasizes Cerdanya. Her case differs from the rest because she doesn't know what life was like before her diagnosis: she was diagnosed with cancer when she was 18 months old and was treated in the hospital until she was four, when she had a mastectomy. Throughout her childhood, she grew up with this gigantic secret inside and worried that her classmates and friends wouldn't find out. "They taught me how to dress and undress so no one would see me, so I could survive a cruel society. I had a friend who knew what had happened to me and helped me hide it from others," recalls Cerdanya.

The disease is savage and relentless, and women's relationship with their bodies is no exception. "I received the diagnosis when I was feeling very well, very strong. How could it be that something was growing out of control inside my body and I wasn't able to attack it? I was very angry, and I'm still angry," says Moya. Carpintero tries to play it down. "I had spectacular breasts and I exploited them a lot. When they took them away, it was like they'd taken my driver's license," she jokes. Humor is an indispensable tool for facing the scars head-on and moving forward. "I experience the illness with this tone, which is what the show captured very well," Fuster points out. "If you stop to think about it, everything we've been through is very strange. But when my children ask me about my breasts, I tell them they made croquettes in Vall d'Hebron."