Manolo García shows up at the Casa Fuster hotel cursing the traffic lights on Paseo de Gracia and the cameras hunting down those who run red lights. He arrives directly from the studio where he usually works in Empordà, “I spend two, three days playing, recording things, when I start working I forget the notion of time and sometimes it gets late and I stay there to sleep.” For those situations, he installed a bunk bed in which he spent the night before returning to the big city and accidentally colliding with traffic, which he does not fully understand. “If some aliens arrived with their flying saucer, they would see some monkeys that ride on cars seven times bigger than them, everyone wants to have one, and they also gather in a place called a city, where the more people seem to be cool.” further. I think the aliens would say: ‘this is strange, let’s go to another planet where they are better organized,’” he comments with the first of the many metaphors he uses in the conversation, at times as convoluted as the lyrics of his songs.
The energy that the singer-songwriter overflows is proof that the myocarditis that forced him to suspend the tour in 2022 is behind him, “I got out of that little problem, which luckily has not been anything serious, and I have been picking up speed according to the body He has given me permission.” That is why he began with performances in theaters, to test himself in the short distance, to start walking and not running, “doing large spaces is already running, it carries a high emotional burden.”
Although the appointment is to talk about the concert that he will give this Saturday at the Palau Sant Jordi, with all the tickets sold for months, half of El Último de la Fila begins a disjointed speech that puts on the table the problems of demographic growth, political corruption, the greed of bankers or climate change, who “does not know about takeovers or wars, does not know who Israel is, Putin, or who will be the president of Catalonia in a month.” Not in vain, the tour that opened in Madrid and now brings him to Barcelona is called Zero Polluting Emissions Now.
“Every centimeter of the planet that we misuse is a bitch for the generations that will come after, the planet is finite, we cannot live with our backs to nature,” he comments, linking ideas without stopping. “We are going to socialize a little, but really, not in the Bolshevik communist style that has also failed although the idea was very great, in theory all ideas are.” From here he jumps to medieval Spain, goes through the cuneiform writing of the first civilizations, returns to the present, to the BBVA takeover of Sabadell, “their business is that we put all our money there and they give us away, we have to demand that they distribute
And he visits his childhood, his summers on the banks of the Segura, a rural world that subjugated him. “When I returned to school in October I was sad, on the other hand when I went to the rural world I did so filled with hope”, a Proustian memory that gives off “a very great dignity and something very exciting that pleased me in a sweetness of living, a something ancient that still lingered in the smells, the flavors.” On the opposite side is the industrial world, “it is a mousetrap, it seems that God has gone on vacation and in his place a man arrives with the dollar or euro symbol, which is the carrot before the donkey.”
The next station is the portal that connects the streets of New York with those of Dublin through live cameras, “quite a few of these monkeys pulled down their pants and showed their asses, so they closed it. “This technology would have to serve for communication more appropriate to our current possibilities,” he points out, and warns that since the industrial revolution “we are going at 200 per hour, and there can be a lot of hell.” The torrent of ideas is endless, “all this fascinates me, and I see no way out,” he comments, which is why he has dedicated himself to composing songs for 45 years, “in order not to explode, it upsets me that they treat us like a group of fools.” . We people have very good faith, we wake up wanting to participate, to work, we pay taxes, we say amen to everything, but treat us well, hey.”
All the thoughts that bubble in Manolo García’s head take the stage with him, “it is an opportunity to share, people on the street talk about these things, about what those who work and those who do not work suffer. “This is a common conversation in a bar, not in parliaments, everyone is in deep water as a result of poor organization,” he explains. That’s why he takes advantage of when he has a microphone in his hand to give voice to these ideas, “I’m not going to take advantage of the fact that a lot of people come to see me to sell them things.” And since his years with Quimi Portet, García has flatly refused to sell his music for commercial purposes because “one of the evils of the world is excessive consumption, we are snacking on the round stone, the planet.” Faced with this problem, he contrasts his pride as a musician, which leads him to put his ideas into practice, “a personal, tiny, tiny, ant-like ethic” without the will to judge those who take other paths, “all respect for them.”
On this occasion, his ethics lead him to appear with a Palestinian scarf around his neck, “what is happening in Gaza is a pain for the entire population,” he highlights, “we would like to fix that problem because there are many people suffering in an atrocious way. ”. The solution for him is to act together in a peaceful way, as he would have liked to have happened when the representative of Israel performed at the Eurovision Song Contest: “That all the Eurofans at the festival would turn their backs and remain silent to say: ‘ You are not up to dancing, there is a problem here, you have to stop now.’”
Along the way of the talk have been the two albums that he presents at the concert, Mi vida en Marte and Desatinos deplumados, published in 2022, which are part of a repertoire that does not forget the classics that Manolo García fans expect: “ I don’t play just for myself, I understand that people want to hear old songs and I am very pleased to interpret them with small changes, nods to myself and my band, with which we have fun and revitalize that song, we give it a new life. He refers, among others, to the songs from El Último de la Fila that he composed with Quimi Portet, “we had the luck and wisdom to make a series of songs that struck a chord with a section of the population, a specific generation.” , a time that he still enjoys “but neither Quimi nor I are shepherds of dishes,” he points out to highlight the difficulties that half-cooking songs entails at certain ages, “you can have kitchen assistants, but you are the one who does the cooking.” dish, I think it is understandable.”
After two years without publishing, is there a new album in the oven? “I need to find calm and music, the chords, the melodies, give it to me. I am storing models, ideas, texts, that solves Tuesday or Thursday mornings for me, and makes the calendar non-existent. The life of a human being is 1,200 months, a very small number, and do I have to spend it thinking about the photographic control of the traffic light or about what a politician said?