Setze jutges d'un jutjat, mengen fetge d'un penjat... [a proverb, Sixteen judges from a court eat a hangman's liver] On the surface it is a rather macabre and perhaps meaningless tongue twister. And little else. But it is not. In reality, it is a proof of authenticity. A phonetic test that makes it almost impossible for non-Catalan speakers to pass and that, therefore, certifies the ‘impurity’ of their condition. The work is based on the intention of problematizing identity as a monolithic, uniform, and solid concept from the absurd.

The author relives with her mother the experience of emigration and the difficulty of constructing a stable and coherent identity. Playing with Catalan tongue twisters and popular songs, she highlights the difficulty of fitting in with the standards of identity correctness, both in the place of departure and arrival.

Laia Ramos' work starts from the every day and the intimate, from family relationships, to highlight the structures, forms of power and traps of our society. If in La vida por venir Ramos explores the complex relationships of the family institution, in Sempre una estranya she looks a little further afield to examine the contradictions with which feelings of belonging, territory, and language are constructed in contemporary Spain.