“We are in a cultural Siberia”

Well, I’ve been in the workshop a lot, doing my stupid things, my fantasies, and putting a little order, or disorder, I don’t know… I’m never sitting idly by. I’ve been busy with the wood, making bars. But since I don’t want to be rich… If I were like a soccer player, who can get rich by kicking a ball, I’d be doing beats all day and I wouldn’t be here wondering if I’m going to sing.

‘We have left the word’ was the title of some recitals he gave in 2007, in venues such as the Liceu (based on the poem ‘I have left the word’, by Blas de Otero). Why recover that statement at this time?

Because things have gotten worse since then, and the word is the only thing they can’t take away from us. With the word things are done, or undone, and there is hope that we can change the course regarding all this crap that is invading us. Because today you have nowhere to put your feet, or your head, with that cultural slump, of demand, that the human being suffers, instead of trying to look less like sheep and cows. And come the bottle, and the songs that are rubbish, and soccer, and television… People who do sports sitting in an armchair. You meet someone whose father or mother has died and he tells you “but our team has won & rdquor ;, and that calms him down. This is what we have come to. The artistic proposals are aimed at illiterate people. What song proposal is there today? Tell me, what has become of the song with content, the one by Raimon, Lluís Llach, Pi de la Serra, and the one by Mikel Laboa, and Xabier Lete, and Luis Pastor?

The singer-songwriter has been transformed, and times are different.

Let’s not look for culprits: what happens today? Is it raining, is it cold? We are in a cultural Siberia. This cannot be endured. And the ministries of culture, what have they done? People are a thousand kilometers from culture. The culture of the bottle, yes. We’re in a tunnel and you can’t keep quiet. These cultural proposals that they present as if they were transgressions… Transgressions of what? If you take a song like ‘Le parapluie’, by Brassens, when at the end she goes one way and he goes the other, “and I saw her all little, happily leaving towards my oblivion”… An expression like that doesn’t Neither you, nor I, nor anyone stop it. It goes to infinity.

But we have, for example, Soleá Morente, who is preparing an album with adaptations of her songs, on which you collaborate.

She has a very good voice and great sensitivity, and she is very nice. She was rehearsing ‘Words for Julia’ with her father when he passed away. I loved Enrique Morente very much. Flamencos should recognize that they owe him how to position their voice in cante. He was not a gypsy, but he assimilated it very well and opened a path. And she Soleá is the daughter of her father, there is no doubt.

You are also preparing your own album, ‘Erase una vez’, with songs “for children of all ages”.

It came up talking to Frederic Amat, who does the album artwork. It has themes with texts by Lorca, such as ‘The lizard is crying’ or ‘My girl went to the sea’ in a new version.

And a piece in Galician, ‘Pomba’, by Antonio García Teijeiro, and another in Catalan, ‘Barques de paper’, by Salvador Espriu.

At the Palau I want to sing another song in Catalan so that Catalans are happy and proud of their language: ‘Molt lluny d’aquí’, by Màrius Torres, with music by Xavier Ribalta. “I know a city, it’s very rainy here, sweet and secret /, on the years of joy they are cool with a night…” And he ends by saying: “The second record of him is a ròssec de recança al meu pas / Torna a la meva espatlla la mà greu del meu pare & rdquor ;. How powerful is this song? And what tenderness, and poetic wisdom. A marvel. To sing it is to say “this is Catalan, I present to you Catalonia”. It is an unattainable poetry, which escapes from your hands. I’ll sing it, of course, and don’t let the ‘collons’ touch us anymore with this Catalan thing.

That night at the Liceu he came to sing in eight languages.

Now, in principle, I will also sing in various languages, such as Italian: ‘Quando l’alber comincia a fiorire’. A popular song, in which a stupid man leaves his beautiful girlfriend in Italy to go live… Where? To united states! You have to be cretin!

In addition to this album, ‘Érase una vez’, announces more albums with poems by Góngora, Quevedo, Samaniego, Bécquer, Storni, Neruda, Lorca…

Songs that I have sung in recitals but have never recorded, or others that are unreleased, finished, and that I have never sung in public…

This tour began on April 4 at the Teatro Coliseum in Madrid. As was?

Well, the people of Madrid behaved very well. At least they proved that they are alive. What energy they have, I don’t know what it will be, if the Madrid stew or what. Something awesome. When I walked out on stage I felt like an explosion. I noticed that people came with anger, a healthy anger, a desire to hear something that would fill their body and soul. It was our Madrid, that Madrid that resisted the fascists to the end, the one that is not a friend of the priests who blessed the bombing of Gernika.

Are you still vetoing the public theaters of the PP town halls?

Have you had any proposal?

Almost none. They do the same: “Recital by Paco Ibáñez, not one, huh?”. So we agree. It is appreciated.

The Ukrainian president, Zelenski, spoke about Gernika a few days ago. How did the comparison make you feel?

Well, it was fair and accurate with what is happening. Mariúpol no longer exists… That unfortunate Putin, who has a void inside, has had that opportunity to destroy a country and try to sink the world, and that’s where we are. See what a ‘son of Putin’ can do. And what they let you do, come on. I have never been to Ukraine, but I have been to Moscow. I worked there, through the Cervantes Institute, about 15 years ago. And before that I had been to Leningrad, Saint Petersburg, but the memory faded, little by little… In Paris I met Bulat Okudzhava, who was the Russian Brassens or Ferré. I also met Vladimir Vysotsky, a Georgian who sang in Russian, the husband of Marina Vlady.

At the Palau there will be Mario Mas (guitar), Joxan Goikoetxea (accordion) and Pep Pascual with his “special effects”. Will you come out willing to improvise with the repertoire, as is usual for you, rather than following a script?

I always go on the go, more or less, but now I know what song to start with: ‘I have the word left’, by Blas de Otero. Before, it began more gently, with ‘My girl went to the sea’, creating an atmosphere. Not now. I go directly. What one proposes is to broaden the cultural field. That people become aware that we are in danger, that this cannot be endured, man.