I am Spanish and was a teenager in the late 90s, when she became famous. I have never understood what people saw in her, as she was clearly illiterate and lacked the intelligence to string a coherent sentence together, not to mention that she was extremely trashy, aggressively vulgar and overtly sexual in the most inappropriate way imaginable. Moreover, she could also be quite unpleasant and was the sort of person who starts uttering insults and throwing punches at the slightest provocation... Which made her ideal for Spanish TV, where many "stars" are slightly demurer versions of her. Still, there wasn't much depth about her and the series romanticizes what was, in reality, an exploitative freakshow.
It is very well known that she had a horrible childhood marked by extreme poverty and constant abuse, which her nasty piece of work of a mother frequently inflicted on her. She was also thrown out of her house at the age of 16, and worked as a bricklayer and "model" for many years, before transitioning. She then became a prostitute and Pepe Navarro, a nefarious journalist who had a rather grotesque late night show (as R29 mentions), became fascinated by her and offered her a lot of money to appear on TV. That made her a star and increased the quality of her clients, as well as how much she could charge for her services - at one point politicians, leaders of industry, footballers and true celebrities were chasing her around, offering her small fortunes for sex.
She then started to throw money around like it was water, allowed the repulsive sociopath Andrea to control her career (do anyone of you truly consider him handsome? He is one of the ugliest men in history, and NO ONE in Italy or Spain, would consider him anything other than a hideous, donkey-faced street urchin), committed insurance fraud several times and ended up in prison for it. When she left prison, she was a bit less of a loud-mouthed idiot than before but, to be honest, she didn't seem to have learned much from that ordeal.
She then lost weight and came back to TV in full force, telling tall tales and being the tacky mess that she had always been... Only to die in rather strange circumstances after making the mistake of mentioning the initials and professions of some of her very powerful former clients, in her autobiography. She could also have been killed by one of the very unsavoury characters that she loved to sleep around with, so who knows? I guess that the trans community are desperate to have martyred role models and are trying to turn her into a tragic heroine, when in reality she was just a beautiful woman with shit for brains and no talent, who became famous for acting like a freak on television, threw it all away and then, died.
Also, she never considered herself transsexual (to be honest, I doubt she was intelligent enough to understand what transgenderism is) and described herself as a "huge faggot". So there - the series is building a castle on a foundation of rubbish, and that's all there is to it.