Agoney: "I didn't discover that homosexuality looked like the devil and its destiny was hell until I was an altar boy"

"You're going to burn in hell."

It is the comment that the singer Agoney (Tenerife, 27 years old) remembers having heard several times in his life for being a member of the LGTBI + community.

He remembered it at dawn this Wednesday before the media, after performing on Tuesday night in the first semifinal of the Benidorm Fest 2023 and becoming one of the candidates to win the contest.

the song with which he tries to represent Spain in this year's Eurovision Song Contest reappropriates the pain born of that hatred.

Only 12 hours after having triumphed in the RTVE contest, the Canarian narrates again in the city of Alicante, before a small group of media, the first time that phrase was spat in his face: "I was an altar boy at the age of 13, before starting to sing.

This is how he discovered a concept of hell that he had not known before.

“There they talked to me about homosexuality like hell.

I already had things very clear because I had not experienced that with my family.

I didn't consider what I was sexually attracted to to be bad,” he says.

More information

Agoney, Alice Wonder, Fusa Nocta and Megara, first finalists of Benidorm Fest 2023

When creating a visual concept for the theme that he presented in the Eurovision pre-selection, he and his team decided to incorporate these personal experiences into the set design and choreography.

A well-known religious and artistic reference, the sculpture

by Michelangelo, appeared in his commented staging on Tuesday, as a way "to connect with the pain experienced at times" in the face of that condemnatory comment.

In

, he plays to dominate that hell, to find the light within its darkness to reappropriate the term.

“The LGTBI+ community continues to have few safe places and I wanted to make this new concept of hell one of them;

let this song be a refuge, ”he explains.

The canary confirmed in that first semifinal of the Benidorm Fest 2023 his status as favorite to win in the final on Saturday, after his performance at the Palau d'Esports l'Illa in the town of Alicante.

He was the only applicant to be placed between the two favorite options of the three voting streams that make up the complex classification system of the contest.

Both the jury of experts, as well as the televoting and the demoscopic sample supported it with high scores.

He ended up leading the list of four qualifiers with 161 points, waiting to choose the other four finalists at the gala on Thursday.

I reject hate

Agoney regrets that the homophobic messages she often receives on social networks come to a large extent from the same LGTBI+ community to which she belongs.

“We speak of a collective as if all the people who belong to it had the same education.

It scares me a lot that many homosexual people continue to be homophobic ”, he comments after having spent the night awake after the success of his first performance in Benidorm.

When the media asked him at dawn if he was prepared for such hate speech at the European level, his answer was blunt: “I don't have to prepare for anything.

People who share hurtful comments should be educated, ”he said, mentioning Malbert, an

who collaborates with TikTok in this coverage of Benidorm Fest 2023 and who is in charge of a

on Podimo called, precisely,

.

"It is they who must be re-educated, who must be taught a lesson, told that people who go on stage must be respected," said the singer.

After hours, he doubts whether he should have given wings to whom he considers to be unworthy of attention.

“I took advantage of the fact that this person, who has been attacking me for five years, was in that press room and that I finally had her in front of me, to answer for the first time.

And I think everyone in the room agreed with me, ”he replies.

Agoney (@Agoney) speaks out about the hate on social networks.

"I don't have to prepare for anything. They need to be educated"#BenidormFest2023 #BenidormFest https://t.co/vMI3e4O2Fr pic.twitter.com/OkKq35O4y5

— Eurovision RTVE (@eurovision_tve) February 1, 2023

Limiting hate speech is one of the obsessions of the RTVE delegation that carries out the Benidorm Fest, aware that the contest is a great promotional showcase for the public entity, for the city that hosts it and for the Valencian Community, which financially support the organization of the event.

Agoney understands that the controversies that often surround this event have to do with its competitive component.

“It is something that I already experienced as a contestant on

What must always prevail is the art, the music and the artists who get on stage, ”she defends.

His television experience, also as a contestant on

and

, where he formed a stage partner for several weeks with a veteran like Ana Belén, has given him a plank to build a bet that engages the Benidorm Fest public.

“

to me gave me the opportunity to free myself, to put on a wig without anything happening and to enjoy myself on stage no matter what.

I'm not operating on an open heart.

But having been with Ana Belén in

gave me the internal strength that she needed to say: I am an artist, I can get on this stage and defend my music for real”, she comments.

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