Former Gay Adult Film Star Running for Mayor of a Spanish Village
Antonio Moreno, who performed in porn as Héctor de Silva, is running as the conservative candidate for mayor of Carcelén.
A former gay adult film actor is running for mayor of a village in central Spain.
Antonio Moreno, better known by his on-screen name Héctor de Silva, is running for mayor of Carcelén, a village of about 483 inhabitants located in the province of Albacete, in Castilla-La Mancha.
The 38-year-old will be the candidate for the conservative Partido Popular (PP), challenging 12-year incumbent Mayor María Dolores Gómez Piqueras, of the left-leaning Spanish Socialist Worker’s Party (PSOE), which currently controls the national government and recently passed a bill making it easier for transgender people to change their gender without having to undergo medical interventions.
According to the Spanish newspaper Diario Sur, Moreno left the adult film industry six years ago and moved to the area with his partner.
He worked as a forest firefighter for the public company GEACAM in Castilla-La Mancha. During that time, he developed an affection for the village of Carcelén, where he had hidden family ties.
“I was born in the city of Albacete but when I arrived here I fell in love with this village and its natural environment, which is spectacular,” Moreno said. “I discovered that an aunt of mine had been given up for adoption to a family in Carcelén, I looked for her and I found her.”
When asked about his work in adult films, Moreno says he is not ashamed of his past.
“I take my past as a porn actor normally, because my family, who supported me, knew about it and I have always told them about it,” he told Diario Sur. “It is a stage in my life that I don’t regret because I learned a lot.”
Moreno, who now works as a livestock farmer, says that Carcelén “needs to improve in many things,” describing the village and the surrounding rural areas as “neglected,” with a high IBI property tax, and a lack of industry needed to attract a base of younger taxpayers, especially families with children, that could help grow the village’s population.
In essence, Moreno’s pitch echoes the type of conservative messaging that has garnered support — not only in Spain, but worldwide — in older, more rural, and working-class communities where residents may feel ignored or abandoned by political elites catering to constituencies in larger, urban, or more cosmopolitan areas.
“Carcelén has many possibilities because it has nature, heritage and its August festivals that could be more widely known,” Moreno said.
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