It’s just about the end of summer when I sit down with Spanish actor, Fernando Lindez. It’s the time when everyone is returning from their holidays, sporting tans that will inevitably fade a few weeks into the following season, but Lindez is glowing.

The 26-year-old model-turned-actor has spent the last month on the idyllic southern coast of Spain. Despite being raised in Madrid, the actor claims the southern coast as home. “It’s very beautiful. We have nice cities like Málaga, Cádiz, Almería. The food is super good. Good parties. Nice people,” he says.

Discovered through a friend of a friend’s Instagram story at the age of 16, Lindez has cemented his status as Spain’s archetypal bad boy, with a brooding face that has graced what seems like a thousand campaigns. In the last year alone, he has walked shows with Ferrari, Giorgio Armani, and Emporio Armani, in between a full slate of acting projects.

This is, however, exactly how Lindez would like to spend his time. Growing up with a cinema-loving father, Lindez has always been into movies. “Forrest Gump, for me, has been my all-time favorite. And, I don’t know, this movie from Ben Stiller—La vida secreta. How do you say this in English?” he laughs, “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. That’s also one of my favorite movies. I love traveling. I love the adventurous spirit in that movie. It touched my soul in that way. I love action movies, fantasy, good thrillers. Guy Ritchie, Christopher Nolan, Coppola. I love cinema. I can’t choose.”

His 2018 role as a series regular on Skam España began similarly to the way that he started modeling—a casting scout saw him on Instagram and invited him to audition. Though he’d previously studied theater, Skam proved to be his major acting debut alongside fellow rising stars Nicole Wallace and Gabriel Guevara. “Before I did my first project, I never thought that I could be an actor,” he admits.  “I was very shy. I just didn’t think I could end up as an actor, you know?” The show saw him play Alejandro Beltrán, a popular boy who grows into his own, (based on William Magnusson in the original Norwegian Skam series).

He soon parlayed this role into a regular appearance as Joel in Seasons 7 and 8 of internationally beloved Spanish Netflix thriller series, Elite. As Joel, Lindez embodied an at-risk teen, navigating the trenches of Madrid’s queer scene after he was kicked out of his home for being gay. Soon, he was appearing in a multitude of Spanish projects: in 2023, he starred in the age-gap romance series, Escándalo, relato de una obsesión, joining Amazon Prime’s new generation of actors specializing in romance and adapted novels, and he recently starred opposite Alícia Falcó in the 2025 drama Tell Me Softly, where he played Thiago.

Now, he’s made the leap across the pond to North American audiences. Lindez plays Julian, starring alongside Maia Reficco and Eva Longoria, in American novelist Anna Todd’s latest novel adaptation, The Last Sunrise, directed by Carlson Young and adapted for the screen by Anna Klassen.

A departure from Anna Todd’s previous series, After, The Last Sunrise follows Reficco as Oriah or “Ry,” a young dancer living with chronic health issues like tuberous sclerosis and epilepsy who accompanies her mother (Longoria) on a business trip to Mallorca. Inspired Todd’s son’s real life struggles with tuberous sclerosis, epilepsy, and autism, the movie is a story that deals with the realities (both negative and, demonstrably, positive) of living with chronic illness. Discouraged by the genre of stories surrounding chronic illnesses in films like The Fault in Our Stars or Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, Todd takes care to not treat illness like a sentence, and that these stories can have positive endings.

The movie, then, is about living in the moment without being made to think about all of the things that could go wrong. If After could be characterized by the hot-and-cold relationship between the characters, then the antagonist in The Last Sunrise is the cosmic strangeness of time.

Enter: the bright blue water of Mallorca, where craggy limestone inlets and crystal clear waters make up the background for Fernando’s first English production. His first project for an English audience and one that treads a lighter, rom-com territory, Lindez spent careful time preparing for the role. “As an actor, it’s been a really good challenge, and also a chance to show myself in a different way of talking, of communicating. I’m so privileged that I had this opportunity, because I think every actor dreams of being involved in an American production,” he says.

The first look we get of Lindez is one with a scowl on his face. “Hey, this beach is for locals only,” Lindez-as-Julian says, emerging from Mallorca’s crystal-blue waters. He is the reticent local fisherman whose family business has been endangered by rapid tourism development. Scowling aside, it’s considerably more upbeat than his previous roles in Elite and Skam España.

Lindez expands on the joys of filming. It was a literal vacation compared to his previous projects. He says, “They got me a house there, it was a super beautiful house, very close to a small beach. It was perfect, because every day I would wake up, open the window, and there was the sea, you know? If it was pretty hot, I just had to walk five minutes and I was right there on the beach, just swimming. The water was beautiful—crystal waters. Almost every day was perfect. I had the best time filming [this] movie.”

“It was kind of like a dream, because I didn’t know Mallorca that well. Being there for a couple of months was incredible. We did a lot of things. Maia and I went to a lot of restaurants, good spots, good beaches. My girlfriend came; we rented a boat. We discovered the center, the old part. It’s such a beautiful place.”

Not unlike his on-screen counterpart Julian, Lindez harbors a sense of pride and a nostalgic feeling for his homeland. “I felt really proud that an American production was coming to Spain to film this kind of movie, to show our culture to the world and also show how beautiful Mallorca is. But I think what is also interesting in the movie is that you can see the beauty of the island, but you can also see what is actually happening  there. I didn’t know Mallorca before, but after spending a lot of time there, you see there are a lot of things that should be more controlled,” he expands. “There is this mass tourism...right now, everybody is building hotels everywhere. I was there two days ago with my girlfriend. Even after just one year, I saw buildings everywhere. [On] an island,  a natural paradise, we should be more conscious about taking care of these beauties and these natural treasures.”

Lindez’s perfect beach day? Not one too unlike his on camera persona in The Last Sunrise. “Probably, I wake up, go to the gym, have a good lunch with my family...We have really good fish down here. Meet with my friends, all my best friends are there, and we would probably go out on the boat, and maybe have a good dinner. If we’re up to it, a good party, a bit of dancing.”

His bag is packed with a swimsuit, a bottle of water and needs to have- “Good company. Always good company. The company is the best thing,” Lindez says, “And also a dulce de leche ice cream.”

“I used to spend a lot of time when I was young at the beach, just fishing, and then cooking the fish and eating it.” Lindez doesn’t fish much anymore. “It’s boring. Maybe when I get older,” he laughs.

“My favorite fish? The best tuna in the world. There are a lot of Japanese boats catching this fish in the south of Spain. When they catch it in Almadraba, this fish, the day after, they are in Tokyo, at the best sushi restaurants in the world. I love crabs and shellfish. Really, really good food. Actually, in all of Spain, our produce is some of the best,” Lindez looks off screen to where his girlfriend Ainhoa Larretxi was sitting and laughs, “My girlfriend is right there. She’s from the Basque region. We’re always fighting because of this, you know?”

Photographed by Sergio González

Styled by Freddy Alonso

Written by Julia Smith

Grooming: Jesús de Paula

Production: Juana Muro Cavanagh at Saik Production

Photo Assistant: Nerea Rey

Style Assistant: Andrea Ortiz

Location: Canopy by Hilton Madrid Castellana, Sala Pepe

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