Spain really came through with some stellar musical releases in 2025. There was the majestic glory of Rosalía’s Lux, the smooth’n’sexy Spanish Leather from Guitarricadelafuente, the adroable Aragonese sophisti-pop of Juanjo Bona’s Recardelino and then there was SVSTO who spent the entire year serving ‘coño’.

Loverboy first clocked the Catalan diva in her video for ‘En La Pista’, strutting through the streets of Barcelona, accompanied by dancers, dolls, drag queeens and kings. ‘I am a queen, the head of state‘, she declared over a thick, heavy, club-ready beat, ‘plastic, glitter and sweaty leather.’ The album CRISIS is wall-to-wall bangers and with production nods to Techno, Rave and Industrial, SVSTO was born from the harsh brustalism of the El Vallès, just outside Barcelona.

With a new EP due this Spring, Loverboy caught up with Carla Parmenter aka SVSTO to find out more about the importance of community, ‘feismo’ and how the project began. ‘I was sick of hearing love songs!’

Carla, hello! Where are you talking to us from?
I’m in the studio in Barcelona. I’m working on more material. I’m not used to being like a corporate artist and having managers tell me, ‘Produce more songs!’ I’m trying to keep up the rhythm and put out my next EP in like April or May. And you? Where are you calling from?

Barcelona too. I’ve lived here for ten years now.
Oh, okay. You got to see the after parties that were still open in 2016. Before tourists ruined it for us.

Yes. My very first bar was the great Madame Jasmine. But yes, even that’s kind of changed since then.
I love Madame Jasmine. Do you think it’s changed a lot? Not that much. Maybe it’s a bit less trash, like everything in Barcelona. Very sad.

I guess it has been ten years too. Everything changes. You featured Madame Jasmine in your video for ‘En La Pista’ and it was the cleanest I had ever seen it!
Me too! I’d never been there before 2 a.m. We filmed that during the day and I was like, ‘Wow, I could eat a plate of pasta off the floor.’

 

CRISIS was one of my favourite albums of last year and I wanted to know how 2025 was for you.
Thank you. It was an amazing year because I hadn’t anticipated that Crisis would have such a good response. I was thinking more of the creative process than what it would bring me as an artist. There was a big fan base with my previous project Las Bistecs, but for five years I’d gone completely off the map. I felt like I was starting again with SVSTO but I’ve realised that those fans are still there which is also surprising.

How does SVSTO differ from Las Bistecs?
What I wanted to put out there as a solo artist was something a bit darker, music wise. There’s no translation for this, but Las Bistecs was more ‘mamarracheo’. I wanted SVSTO to be festive and still have this spark but then go to a darker techno place, maybe something a bit more serious. I always say that, but then I’m like…it’s so not serious!

I came to see your show at Plaza Catalunya for La Mercé festival. It was so good!
I never get emotional but I got emotional there because that was the concert that I had really, really wanted to do. That show was less about SVSTO for me. I wanted to make it ‘reivindicativo’ and put Catatalan culture up on the stage. That’s why I went and convinced these ‘sardeneros’ to come dance with me. For me culture is taking history and the future and mixing them together. Being able to have some sardeneros onstage dancing to techno. That was the peak of my career. It’s all downhill from here.

Not yet! Were you making music before Las Bistecs?
I can’t play any instruments. I’m terrible. I mean, there’s always been music in my house. So I think I have an ear, but I was never musical. But I’ve always loved writing, and that’s kind of how I got into the music scene. I’ve always done theatre too and things like that. So it was more from the performance side that I went into this than from the musical side, and it was really a joke. My ex-Bistec Alba and I were at an afters or something and just really annoying our friends because we’d invent silly little songs. Our friends were like, ‘We can’t take it anymore, please shut up!’ So we were like, ‘No! We’re going to make it BIG!’ It was so stupid that I still can’t believe it worked! We started off in Freedonia. Do you know that one?

Absolutely. What a venue. Grimey, sticky, dirty.
Yes, but also too clean right now.

 

You have such a clear vision for SVSTO and CRISIS. How long did it take you to find that groove?
Thank you. I’m so ADHD that I’m surprised because this feels like a really well-rounded project! I think it’s because I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. Obviously, it’s got a lot of Las Bistecs in it. But with my friends I’ve always had this alter ego of an evil woman. It’s just something that comes out when you’re going out and stuff. It was a kind of performance. We used to call her Velma. I think it’s delicious to play this nasty woman and have this imaginary world. That’s where it all started.

Was Velma a Scooby Doo reference?
No, it was actually the musical Chicago. But I knew that I loved being like this evil woman. I’ve always been feisty, very into activism and social justice. And also I’ve always wanted to embrace this Industrial aesthetic that I had run away from in the 2010s when I came to live in Barcelona. I’d always lived in El Valles which is half an hour away and an industrial zone. It was not cool to be free from there. Back in the 2010s it was all about symmetry and pastels. We were trying to be hipsters. Everything was classical beauty inspired. I tried being that and failed. That’s where Las Bistecs came into play and what we call ‘feismo’ which is embracing ugliness and the freedom it gives you. There are no limits. I’ve gone off on a tangent now, but I wanted to go back to this imagery of industrial landscapes that I had as a kid and play with it.

For the image of SVSTO, was it a collaboration for you with your friends? How does it work?
No, I always say it’s a collective project. It’s me and my friends, really. I’m lucky to be surrounded by friends who inspire me so much and who are on the same kind of wavelength, creatively and really understand the character. They know me, they know where SVSTO is coming from and I don’t have to explain anything. I’ve got my stylist Uriel Mena who comes up with these amazing, cheap but creative outfits. Cristina, one of my best friends who helps with management. Then I’ve got Alberto who does my graphic design. I mean, I’ve got loads, loads of friends who help. It’s not me. It’s them and they have amazing ideas.

Tell me about your lyrics. I want to know about this combination that you do so well between humour and activism. Does that combination come naturally?
That’s a good question. I mean, to me, it does. I’m sick of hearing love songs. which I listen to a lot, but I think other people are better at that! So I always start writing with something that’s bothering me and it’s usually something that’s happening socially. Like, I can’t pay the rent. Then I like to combine it with humour. 99% of my friends are from the LGBTQ+ community, and they have always shown me, especially in Barcelona, there’s a big tradition of party and politics being intertwined. I’ve always kind of been in that scene and I don’t see them as separate. I think it’s really important to have humour and to not be serious all the time. You combine both. That’s what ultimately my songs are made of.

On ‘Alfa’, you talk about being dangerous, guerillas and artistas. I wanted to know who your alphas are.
Oh, the alphas in my life are my female friends. Alphas are the women who sit on a chair on my street, just shouting at the kids all day. Haha…Alphas are the people working at Madame Jasmine. Alphas are Paqui, who makes my bocatas. They’re just these imperfect women who have a bit of an attitude and are like, also very fun. ‘Alfa’ was actually a love song to my female friends. An ode to strong women.

I lived in the Raval for four years so I know those women too. I really miss the energy, the characters.
Right, I don’t need a TV. I just go out on the balcony and get entertainment 24/7.

In your video for ‘En La Pista’, you have drag kings and queens, voguers out here in the streets…
All of my album is dedicated to the LGBT+ community but it was very important for me to dedicate that particular song about partying and politics to the Trans community. So I enlisted Jayce and their dancers to be on stage with me. It was so much fun serving cunt down the Rambla del Raval with this massive dress on.
I thought it was really important to have this beautiful video where they were the real protagonists along with the streets of the Raval. I think it’s really important for artists to work with the community, because I can see this tendency of artists to promote the bling bling life, this rich person who’s individualistic and isolated from from their community. So I wanted to do something completely different and get the best of the Raval in the video..

It looked great. When I’ve been to see you or other Catalan acts that I love, there’s a definite message of ‘Guiris Go Home.’  I agree that tourism is a real problem but when I live here and I’m coming to a show, hearing that makes me feel uncomfortable and that I don’t want to bring my friends or family. Don’t you think the problem begins with the government rather than the tourists themselves? And do you think there’s also a way of making the message more educational than ‘Go home’?
Okay, there are many things here. I think this is made to make you uncomfortable, that’s the purpose. You should be feeling uncomfortable about this. I mean, I’m the daughter of a guiri, but, you know, she’s been living here since the 1980s. She pays taxes here. She speaks Catalan, right? So you’ve got to understand that it’s obviously not against individuals. It’s against the government, especially Collboni right now, who is just opening the city more to all the mass tourism. We’re selling the city to tourists and it’s making life for us residents very difficult. So that’s the message.
I don’t think we should be educational towards tourists. I think it has to be a strong message, and ‘Tourists go home’ is the ‘lema’. Although it’s a critique against the government, if it makes you think about what kind of tourism you want to bring when you’re in the city, I think it’s a positive thing.
We’re sick of seeing drunk English tourists. But I mean I’m from an Essex family, so this is probably what they do when they go on holiday. I used to live in El Gótico and we used to have like 50 people coming along with this guide down the small streets. This is not tourism that is good for the city.
So I think it’s great to have kind of this ‘lema’ that’s been propelled internationally and maybe when we all visit a city, because we’re also tourists in other cities, it will make us think about about how we want to behave and where we want to put our money.

Finally Loverboy is named after the biggest selling single of 2001…in America or maybe globally?! So we always ask, what is your favourite Mariah Carey song?
Oh my God. I won’t say the fucking Christmas songs – my favourite thing is probably that whistle note. I didn’t listen to a lot of Mariah Carey but I do watch many, many reels of her because I love her. She is a total ‘Alfa’.

The album CRISIS is out now. A new EP will be out Spring 2026.
SVSTO plays LETS 20 ANYS (w/Alizzz) on 7th March at Sala Salamandra, Barcelona.
SVSTO also plays La Cruilla Festival, Barcelona in July.

Photo by César Segarra.