It’s been 31 years since they separated, but the fans of the 80s have not forgotten them and “then the new generations have joined”. Mecano is a safe bet and the musician Gonzalo Pérez Pastor knows it. For this reason, he has devised and promoted the show Cruz de navajas, “a different and innovative show that recovers 37 songs by the mythical group”.
Pérez Pastor acknowledges that “Mecano was not my favorite, but I did not hesitate to enlist in the show Hoy no me puedo levantar and I spent three years on tour with Nacho Cano in which I understood why Mecano fell in love with the public. His secret was the different way of composing from the brothers Nacho and José María. They were very different but both had a formula that makes their songs stay in the head”.
12 years ago I can’t get up today, but after that tour, Pérez Pastor fell in love with the music of Mecano and learned that songs like The Force of Destiny, Lost in my room, It costs me so much to forget you or Woman against woman “had seduced to the new generations and not only to floats like me”. So he created “a show different from anything that has been seen so far, which navigates between the musical and the concert and which is still a tribute to Mecano”.
“In Cruz de navajas there is no story from beginning to end as is usually the case in musicals. Each of the 37 songs has its own plot and each theme is presented with its own music, choreography and costumes,” explains Pérez Pastor in an interview with La Vanguardia. “We have also sought that the artists feel comfortable and that they can sing the songs in the best way,” he adds.
The Cano brothers were the architects of the group’s success with their compositions, but Ana Torroja’s voice had a lot to do with Mecano becoming the most popular Spanish trio of all time. Now, at Cruz de navajas, there are nine singers who provide the voices for the well-known songs by Mecano. Seven of them were chosen in a casting carried out among more than 2,000 candidates in 2020 when the show started, which has already passed through Valencia, Bilbao and Madrid.
The show will arrive in Barcelona on Tuesday and has included Clara Sánchez and Joan Liaño, two young singers who have made themselves known on Eufòria, the TV3 talent show. Cruz de navajas has also served to give a second life to the dome of Las Arenas by turning it into a theater with 1,300 seats. Nearly 400 people have worked on the remodeling of the space in the old bullring that will host the show and which has incorporated robotic lighting, videos and acrobatic numbers that will shine to the rhythm of Mecano’s unforgettable songs.
