Maite & Camino’s forbidden lesbian love story from the Spanish series ”Acacias 38”

”Acacias 38” is a Spanish soap opera series involving more Spanish bourgeois families and their servants living in the same neighborhood from a big Spanish city. It is based in between 1899 – 1914, just after the Spanish-American five month War, when Spain loses colonies like Cuba, Guam and Puerto Rico and a peace treaty was ratified between Spain and the US and just before the First World War.

The characters are charismatic, moody and beautiful involving passions, jealousies, revenges, hate and much love. They differ as much as they’re alike, they come and go as far as their destinies lead them to.
Maite and Camino are the characters I want to write about, as I loved them most.

Camino Pasamar (Aria Bedmar) is a young woman living together with her family who owns a restaurant in Acacias. She , her mother and her brother take care of the family business. Camino has to overcome all the anti-feminist ideas of the era on which her mother insists on : a young woman like her should work on her family business as the family is the most important thing in her existence or a young woman like her should look for a man coming from a good family to marry and have children. Her own dreams shouldn’t really matter.

Camino is young, inexperienced, sometimes vulnerable, having a good reason from the past, yet she is strong, daring and with new hopes and dreams she can hold on to, as she knows something is missing from her life, from the moment she meets Maite, she understands what her future could be.
Camino likes to draw pencil paintings out of a boredom and to escape her mother’s verbal attacks and the work at the restaurant. Maite sees her drawings and is convinced of Camino’s huge talent and she does everything to help her in developing her talent and why not go to college.
And Maite convinces Camino’s mother Felicia to let her give Camino drawing classes. And so Maite and Camino’s live adventure begins. And their love.

Maite Zaldua (Ylenia Baglietto) is a famous painter who has lived in Paris and now has returned to Acacias as Armando Caballero’s nice. She is a free, revolutionary spirit and a gulp of fresh air for the Acacias community and for the women here. She is a feminist ahead her time. She had a bad romance history herself, because she secretly love women and she knows how difficult it is in this era for two women to love each other, none would buy her paintings or illustrations if she would expose on of her female embracing each other paintings. She wants women to have the same rights as men, to vote and to live and love as they wish. She is a rebel of her era and as much as the women from Acacias love her at first, they end up envying her for her freedom and her courage.
Empathy, courage, passion and talent are few words to describe Maite.

When Maite meets Camino she sees more than just a young woman working in her family’s restaurant. She sees a compassionate, sometimes vulnerable and talented young woman, who lives in the shadow of her mother or of a future husband, according to the social conventions of the era. Maite sees Camino’s talent and wants to help her evolve and fulfill her destiny, to become an artist and not just a housewife.
She convinces Camino’s mother Felicia to let her give Camino drawing lessons.
From this moment we know a beautiful adventure is about to start. The actresses are doing an awesome job in impersonating those talented women that can’t help but share their love for art and for each other.

Slowly they do fall in love with each other and although their reactions are different : Maite is reserved, as she knows what scandal their love could cause and she wants to protect Camino and Camino is enthusiastic, as a young spirit would be just to break free and meet her first love and the love of her life in her mentor.
I loved their prelude : soft, sweet & tender, yet passionate and ablaze.
I enjoyed their reactions, involving so many passionate emotions and hidden sensations.
Maite and Camino start a secret relationship and they are adorable in trying so much to make their love possible in such an anti-feminist era.