“If I had a good voice, I can tell you that I would hang up my toga.” For one of the best criminal lawyers in Barcelona, ??with clients as notorious as Félix Millet, Narcís Serra, Sandro Rosell, Santi Vila, the Infanta Cristina or Shakira, to pronounce himself in these terms would be incredible if he did not know the singer beneath the lawyer. Or parallel to it. Pau Molins (Barcelona, ??1962), Pablo when he is with his family, is the leader of the musical band PorFinViernes, which he shares with twelve other members. The group was born improvised 25 years ago: “A few friends of us had dinner on Fridays with our partners, today at your house, next week at mine, and at the end one would play the piano, another would take out the guitar and they would the many singing My main contribution, in any case, is to help make the solidarity project visible”.
The opportunity to perform before people beyond their circle was offered by a Jesuit priest: “The brother of one of the singers was a missionary in Bolivia and he suggested that we give a concert, bring twenty friends each, collect a small donation ticket and give it to him. for his parish in Cochabamba”. It was the pretext they needed. They gathered more than 200 people and the Jesuit once again believed in miracles. The first concerts were for the missionary and since then everything has gone up.
Their temple is the well-known Luz de Gas room, where they always play altruistically. Fede Sardà gives them the venue and all proceeds from ticket sales go entirely to the associations to whom the concert is dedicated with an infallible repertoire of versions; from Joe Cocker to Men G, from Aretha Franklin to Tina Turner. “We never could have imagined that something that started as fun (we always remember that we are not professionals) has achieved such success. We fill up with charity concerts and thus we have helped a lot of foundations so that they can implement their objectives of helping those most in need. We feel very proud, although the main merit goes to the foundations that dedicate themselves to others and the public that attends the concerts”, he concludes with satisfaction.
Molins, the father of four children and as many grandchildren, is the youngest of eleven siblings and a member of an illustrious Catalan business saga whose grandfather founded Cementos Molins and brought Formula-1 to Catalonia 100 years ago. He chose to be a lawyer and, once licensed, his announcement that he would be a criminal lawyer caused little less than a family earthquake: “When I started practicing, criminal law was only talked about in events; he was the Cinderella of the law and the big law firms avoided him because he stigmatized. At that time, the tax crime, to give an example, although it existed in the penal code, was not applied. After the economic hit of the 90s, criminal law began to sneak into the pages of economics. Starting the next decade and with the corruption, he moved to the political section. Today, he invades any journalistic information, even sports ”.
Pau Molins began his career in 1986 and in 1994 he opened his own law firm, Molins Defensa Penal. Today he has offices in Madrid and Barcelona and employs more than 35 people with prestigious lawyers and academics in his ranks. “Criminal is a fascinating discipline but you also see how your defendant’s family suffers and sometimes it’s a thankless profession: if you win it’s because the client was innocent and if you lose, it’s because the lawyer has done it wrong,” says Molins. It reached its zenith when Miquel Roca Junyent was commissioned by Don Juan Carlos to defend Infanta Cristina in the Nóos case, and Roca delegated to him the difficult task as a specialist who came from winning complicated media cases and earning the respect of the union. Then came cases as famous as those of Sandro Rosell and Shakira, among others.
Molins detects parallels between solidarity music and his profession: “In a trial you try to transmit, convince and, why not, seduce: the same thing I do on stage. The difference is that in Justice there is usually a winner and a loser but in music you make everyone happy and, with our solidarity project, especially those who need it the most”.
