Last Sunday, Víctor Manuel’s 75th Anniversary Tour closed in Madrid, which has toured almost a hundred Spanish locations since June 2022. I was able to see this concert, subtitled Life in Songs, at the Liceu in Barcelona on the 7th, and I It was shocking to see to what extent, without having followed Mieres’s interpreter’s career especially closely, I knew by heart a good part of the lyrics of ‘I am a heart lying in the sun’, ‘Grandfather Víctor’, ‘Nothing tastes as sweet as his mouth’, ‘The pilgrimage’, ‘Luna’, ‘Who put more’…

Joan Manuel Serrat’s farewell tour is still recent – which I was also able to attend, a year ago – it is worth highlighting the role of common thread in our recent culture of a small group of performers who triumphed at a very young age, were anti-Franco emblems and later They knew how to get their career back on track by recycling old hits and creating new ones.

In the case of those mentioned, we must associate them with Ana Belén, wife and usual artistic partner of the former, and Miguel Ríos – of less political significance, and more of a rocker – with whom they carried out the ‘El gusto es Nuestros’ tour in 1996-1997. , which totaled half a million viewers. A record.

Víctor Manuel is a sober singer, who in his beginnings combined northern folklore, committed vision and pop; He has continued to deliver dozens of songs on the romantic or social aspects, and in his current recitals he appears dressed in dark clothes and with six musicians, including his son David on the piano. He wrapped his songs with brief and contained interventions of an autobiographical nature, tinged with Asturian retracement.

It remains in good shape for more than two hours. To present one of his greatest hits, ‘I only think of you’, inspired by a true story that occurred in a pioneer center in the town of Cabra, he remembers that “still today many people thank me for having written it, because the song contributed to make mental disability visible”, and he sang it together with Johann Sebastian Salvatori, a baritone with Asperger’s supported by the Grupo Sifu Foundation, from which he read a statement.

The memories of his grandfather shot in the war, of his railway father and of the difficult post-war years easily explain his repeated commitment, lack of resentment and give him notable credibility.

A song with a curious story, which he explained, was ‘The Coward’. He composed it while he was doing his military service, a time when he often came to Barcelona to record with the Belter house in temporary studios at the Casino l’Aliança del Poble Nou, and he also often traveled by train from Madrid to Asturias.

While traveling, he read a report by the legendary Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci in Gaceta Ilustrada, a sister publication of this newspaper, which as it was a Spanish-style Paris Match. It told the story of an American soldier who had spent the night attached to the corpse of a friend of his, during the Vietnam War then in full swing, and wondered what he was doing there.

He was inspired by a melody that he sent to the 1968 Atlantic Song Festival, which was held in Puerto de la Cruz, Tenerife. In the voting he came first, but the military governor of the Canary Islands, Héctor Vázquez – “remember that name,” Víctor Manuel urged the Liceu audience – protested, arguing that it was an anti-militarist anthem, that this could not be the case and that the vote had to be repeated. .

That’s how it was done. In the second he came fourth, and very appropriately given the time, the winners were the trio Los Mismos, with their song ‘El hombre del tiempo’, whose depoliticized chorus, which would become very popular in the following years, read: “Only Canarias , preserves the spring climate/Tenerife has sun insurance/Tenerife has sun insurance.”

It has been said that with good feelings you cannot make literature, but after listening to Víctor Manuel it is clear that with them you can make a good concert. Merry christmas.