“Joaquíiíiííín, it's three fourteen! “To schooleeee!” For a long time, this was the target that woke Joaquín up from his nap. He lived opposite the school and afternoon classes started at a quarter past three. With one jump he stood on the landing and with strides crossed the door of the San Luis Gonzaga, in Majadahonda (Madrid). Joaquín Polvorinos decided to make the bugle call his own name.
As Pol 3.14 he has climbed several eight-thousanders: he set music to Paco's men (What you don't see, La terminal, Simply, Bipolar), Three meters above the sky (A ras del cielo) and El barco (Jóvenes siempremente, In our rearview mirror) until he made the international leap with La casa de papel. His next eight thousand, surely Everest, will arrive on December 29 with the premiere of Berlin, a spin-off of the most international Spanish series, also on Netflix.
Yours is the tune that accompanies the end of La casa de papel and you return with Álex Pina and Esther Martínez Lobato to perform an important song in Berlin. How do you feel about being part of the most anticipated series of the last year?
I have been in other similar projects but this is a gift and a prize. What am I going to tell you? I am very grateful to the team for having me because it is a brutal opportunity for expansion. The influence that these series have worldwide puts you in the ear of a huge audience. I think it's the dream of many artists, so I try to live up to it.
Michelle Jenner told us a few days ago how excited she was. How does one get inspired to tackle a song about an international phenomenon like this saga?
Fortunately I am surrounded by a team: these assignments are made between the series team and me, who am the interpreter and give my brushstrokes. I really like doing these kinds of things. Although it is not the first time because I am more almost an apprentice, a listener to the scriptwriters and producers. I like to see how it works and how the song has to be a certain way to fit the plot. On other occasions I have done it alone but on this one there were very clear parameters. And you realize why these people are so successful: they don't leave anything behind, not even a single fringe.
Singing at María Pombo's wedding made you visible to many people who perhaps knew your songs from La casa de papel, Sky Rojo or Los hombres de Paco but who didn't give you a face. Have you thanked him properly?
That's how it is, I can't correct a comma: he got to know me a lot, he gave me a huge push. I have to be honest, I didn't know the power of influence that this couple has. I went because I had a certain relationship with Pablo [Pablo Castellano offered María her performance as a surprise], she had known him for years and it turns out that Joven eternalmente was her favorite song and things turned out the way they did. I had a great time, I even got excited. And then it is true that on the colder side of the matter it was very good for me. Apart from the fact that he put a face to my project, I also attracted a lot of audiences from younger generations: now at my concerts there is a brutal range, from 18 to 40-something: that recycling that arose thanks to the wedding is very cool.
I have read that you define your style as “melancholic optimism.” How is that understood?
I am a little nostalgic and I always try to end the topics by saying that there is hope; I think I'm telling myself, selling the motorcycle that within hardships there is always a door of light. I give you as an example the last topic I brought up, Don't think about it anymore: within that melancholy that I carry – my therapist is doing his job very badly (laughs) – in which I say “After investigating inside my soul I realized that there was a light with a flame as long as you want.” This means that everything is in you, you can. And if I can encourage people who need it, all the better. Anyway, I have those two faces.
So, how do you compose better, with a broken heart or in love and reciprocated?
In love and reciprocated because with a broken heart I blocked myself. I need some time to adapt. I can't even... It's a very complicated situation for me, although now I have more tools to address this type of situation. It's very difficult for me to react.
Do you remember when you have been happiest on stage?
Yes. When I gave my first concert as Pol 3.14. I was in the dressing room of the Sol room, I didn't know what was going to happen and when I came out the room was full. It was a memory that I will always have in my memory because well, it's when it all started and you don't know where it's going to end. And it was my first concert and I will always have a special affection for the room, for everything that happened that day. It was very exciting.
You studied Journalism, you have written Impulses and La zona fuchsia. Will you return to literature?
I'm taking it back. Part of it is that she makes me rest from music, with which I am always at full capacity. My experience with The Fuchsia Zone was beautiful, it took me a lot to write it because it is a bit paranoid and just when I published it, they confined us, so the launch went to hell. I'm writing another one, I'm going very slowly because I respect the profession a lot. It is one of the most difficult things I have ever faced. If tomorrow I don't have the strength to go on stage because God doesn't give me the health of Mick Jagger, then I will try to write and I would like to dedicate myself full time.
You have the makings of a movie heartthrob, D'Artagnan stuff. Now that a new version of Dumas' classic is released, have you never been tempted to act in addition to singing or have you not been interested in trying?
Thank you so much. Well, I did dramatic art many years ago, but for a therapeutic reason: I was very shy and I decided to do it because I was already bordering on rudeness. They were wonderful years of my life in which I found myself engaged in a rather brutal task of introspection, which I think is being lost in these times, and it was very good for me because I discovered things about my personality and way of being, which I didn't know But I'm already telling you that it hasn't hit me there.
I don't know if you're a Christmas guy but if you like it, how are you going to celebrate this holiday season?
I have mixed feelings, but well, I do celebrate it and I will try to be with my family as much as I can because it is a time to share: the nostalgia that I was telling you makes me feel especially melancholic, you remember the people who are missing, you act like a kind of balance. For New Year's Eve I try to leave Madrid and if I can, take a bath in the sea following that tradition to cleanse oneself and leave the bad behind, that kind of ritual. If there are waves better, I'm a surfer; As long as there are waves there is hope.
Wow, wow, we have a fan of the movie They Call Him Bodhi.
Of course! That's where my hobby comes from, precisely. It relaxes me to know that no matter how bad everything goes, the sea is always there.
Are you superstitious? I mean if you do more rituals, for example, before going on stage.
Yes, I have a very curious one: to warm up I do a few Bruce Lee screams, which I loved as a child, while I play the soundtrack of Enter the Dragon. And he frees you, huh? You enter the mood, which is said now.
