Alina was born in Vienna, her father was from Argentina and her mother was of Swiss nationality, but lived in Austria. As a child, she travelled around Europe and Latin America with her parents until they settled in Fuerteventura in the late seventies. So, Alina grew up between two very different worlds: Fuerteventura – an island which at that time was sparsely inhabited and represented a rustic and deserted paradise, and cities like Vienna, Zurich and Basel. In Vienna, she graduated in Spanish and Italian Philology, as well as in Pedagogy and did a Master’s degree in “German for Foreigners”. She studied teaching Spanish, Italian and German as a foreign language at university. She acquired her practical knowledge at various community colleges in Austria and Germany, at language schools in Switzerland and at the Goethe Institute in Madrid.

Already as a child, Alina spoke several languages and was aware of the problem of not knowing foreign languages on an island that lived off tourism. It hurt her to see friends and classmates leave school early to work in the tomato fields or clean hotels with no other way out. She was also aware of the injustice that existed in the jobs, as foreigners had more possibilities of accessing them than Canarians, simply because they knew languages. On the other hand, she also witnessed various difficulties of adaptation on the part of foreigners on the island, because they did not speak Spanish. At the age of 17, she left the island, making a promise to herself that if she ever returned, she would do something to solve this problem of misunderstanding between two cultures.