According to her father, Antonina Obrador was like this: "At school they formed a group, Las Txotxonas, and she was the singer."

PalmWhen someone recounts how a baby cried for three months after birth, it's impossible not to think, "Oh, poor thing." And surely, it's equally inevitable that the parent telling the story will chime in with, "Poor little thing, the baby? We, her parents, were the poor ones!" Tomeu Obrador, the father of the "weeping baby," says he was so sleepy through life that he almost bought an entire encyclopedia from a vendor. During our conversation with him, we'll discover if the baby, now a film director and owner of the Call Vermell bookstore in Felanitx, Antonina Obrador, inherited her father's sense of humor.

First of all, Obrador Sr., who doesn't laugh much but plays a lot during our chatter, apologizes because he "has never been as old as he is now" (and he's only 70!), which makes it hard for him to remember anecdotes. It is precisely for this reason that Antonina sometimes scolds her: "She says I tell everything wrong and that I don't remember things," he points out. Be that as it may, her eldest daughter trusts her to talk about her.

"Like in fables," says Tomeu, "María and I had three children." And so, in Felanitx, in 1986, Antonina was born, whom everyone remarks resembles her maternal godmother: "She's a spitting image." She's the eldest; when Antonina was three, Mariona arrived; when she was nine, Julián. Above all, her father says, the birth of her sister impacted her greatly; it made her very jealous.

As a child, she loved to act: she would dress up, sing, stand in front of a stained-glass window in their house and pretend she was in an advertisement. "She was a fun doll. You had a good time with her," says Tomeu, before adding: "She also drew. She was already doing the things of the..." storyboards "When I was little, I used to make really fun drawings." This is true both for those who know her personally and for those familiar with her audiovisual works, such as the film Quest (2023) or the short film ARK (2024), these concerns she had as a child have found their place in her adult life. However, as a little girl, Antonina never said she wanted to be a film director. Well, if she did, her father doesn't remember. "I don't recall her saying what she wanted to be when she grew up, but based on what she did and what she liked, she seemed drawn to show business. At school, they did extracurricular activities, and she did theater and had the actor Xim Vidal as a teacher."

In fact, her father emphasizes that Antonina has always been very creative and has a knack for living in fantasy: "She would tell her mother and me things that we later discovered weren't true." He recounts that she and some friends made a trailer for a short film with the camera she received as a gift from the Three Kings when she was between 12 and 14 years old. Also, in high school, "she had a band called Las Txotxonas, and she was the singer," says Tomeu, who uses irony throughout the conversation: "They were like Rosalía, but from that era. They performed for a bit or two and then she quit to join the Chess Club in Barcelona."

Antonina lived in Barcelona for over a decade, but recently moved into the ceramics workshop of her mother, Maria Ramis, who recently retired. There, she runs a bookstore specializing in photobooks and organizes various activities throughout the year. Antonina grew up in this workshop, playing with clay and admiring her mother's pieces, which now mingle with her daughter's bookish and visual scraps. Incidentally, we still don't know if she inherited her father's irony. With a serious expression, Tomeu Obrador lets out a half-laugh: "Yes, she's ironic. In fact, irony is the only thing she inherited from me."