How did Raimon experience his recitals in the early eighties? What and how did he read? What were his concerns? Many of the answers can be found in Personal i transferible (Empúries), an editorial novelty written forty years ago, the product of the diary that the singer-songwriter from Xàtiva wrote between the end of 1980 and the end of 1983. On the surface, it was a very different world. –just coming out of the dictatorship, there were no cell phones and tickets cost 300 pesetas–, but in other aspects nothing has changed much.
Why are you publishing this book now? In 1983 he already published Les hores guanyades, and this is the continuation of it, but it came out forty years later.
I found it and thought maybe it would be worth it. I hope whoever buys it likes it, but it is very different, I was 40 years younger. If it is useful, good, and if not, what is to be done? The bona gana ho dona llaurador, they say. I'm excited that people read it and like it and that they are interested.
And you won't continue publishing the rest of the journals?
I continued writing, but there is no continuity like in the first two, and starting in the nineties or so I got tired because I was with other stories going up and down the world.
How have you reunited with the Raimon of forty years ago?
It's a way of explaining myself and seeing what kind of society we lived in. Franco died in 1975, five years passed and in 1981 there were the first elections. Those who were with Franco continued, the Francoists were still there, and it seemed to me that the foundations of a new society that would come were beginning to be laid.
We haven't changed as much as it may seem.
In some aspects not much has changed, but modernity has also arrived, with all the networks, an avalanche of information that is what most distinguishes that era from this one.
“The technological revolution that is taking place in the world is being experienced in Xàtiva, and I imagine that many towns, in terms of unemployment and video cassettes…”, he wrote then.
Now instead of video cassettes it is mobile phones, networks, I don't know what... How do these revolutions reach us? We are the same, illiteracy continues although everyone goes to school, but ignorance is becoming more and more daring.
Many entries could be written today. He writes that in Madrid before they only distinguished between Madrid and the periphery, and then between Madrid and autonomies. Now it seems to them that Madrid is Spain...
And period! It's funny, it surprises you how the mentality changes in some things but deep down it is the same. It's Madrid.
He also writes that “the army already rules and no party represents a threat to rein in, that is, to subordinate, the army.”
Like now. That's how it went. The Civil Guard itself does whatever they want, although it is not as strong as then.
There was hope in the triumph of the socialists, but when they come to power they are already saying that everything is more or less the same.
There are small nuances, but during those years they do not undo the past.
In many aspects not much has changed, but last Tuesday it was possible to begin speaking in Congress in more languages than Spanish.
And it is very important because it attests to real diversity, something that had not happened until now, and if people go a little further they can move towards a federal State, which is what it should be. Confederal would already be the host, but a federal State would have to be, and everyone would fit comfortably. It's a wish. Perhaps the socialists have been forced? Surely, but temperament and the way of seeing things have changed, and there are socialists of many types.
In Valencia you go backwards with your tongue.
The thing is that Valencian is an absolutely different language from Catalan, and those who defend it say it in Spanish because otherwise it would not be understood, he, he, he. They have appointed a bullfighter as Minister of Culture!
He writes that “they want to make people believe again now, without scandal, that the person discriminated against in Catalonia is the Spanish-speaking individual,” and the left was beginning to say it.
It's very surprising, you were scared. And even now you go to any office or many places and damn it all has to be in Spanish. The Spanish State has been a bad copy of French, and if they had done it right, we would surely all be speaking Spanish.
At that time many parties called on him to act on their behalf...
It was often a kind of blackmail, “if you don't sing for us you won't do anything anymore.” Well, what are you going to do?
He writes how the Creu de Sant Jordi is proposed to him and he rejects it.
What were we doing there, when the Generalitat absolutely laughed at the music and the players? He didn't do anything at all for the song. Since it couldn't be theirs, then you were an enemy. If not, you had to be there under Pujol's orders.
It is seen in the book how he has a lot of relationship with people of culture in both Catalan and Spanish, which today are often two completely distanced worlds.
It wasn't like that then, it was Catalan people who wrote in Spanish because it was the language they had used. Now there is a separation. If you haven't mastered the Catalan language, it is more difficult to get there, especially with Spanish being so close, and even for market reasons. You know that in Catalan you will sell two and in Spanish, if it works, it will be twenty. Now it is read a little more in Catalan, but if I had written instead of singing, a quarter of the people would have known me, because it was not read in Catalan, only those from la ceba and some from l'all.
Every five or ten pages he curses himself because he reads very disorderly. But lots of reading!
When I picked up a book that I liked, I wanted to go further, but then I would start reading something else, with a feeling of disorder that I would like not to have but that I still have.
A hungry and multilingual reader.
From the first moment I have always had a lot of curiosity and a great love for languages. French, English, Spanish, Catalan and Italian are my linguistic field, but not beyond that anymore. I read in the languages I can because I also want to keep them alive, at least as a reader. Because they open up a range for you that you didn't have and with books that I wouldn't have read here until twenty years later. In fact, I started writing in Catalan because I didn't know it and I thought that the only way to know was to start writing, because all my education has been in Spanish and French, and with English I learned on my own.
In the book we find an intimate Raimon who is not known.
I don't know what idea you have of me, I have found many surprises from very different people who have different ideas. People who know me a little know that I am a sensible and hard-working person, but people who don't know me get the idea that they will know where it comes from.
Perhaps it is surprising to read that then, between 41 and 43 years old, he saw that in a few years, between five and ten, he would stop singing...
That was the idea, and in fact I have done little else. And since I finished, in 2017, I did some things, but now I have entered my 80s, which is something that I do not advise anyone.
We see Raimon with a career, but he was really very young.
The thing is that at 40 years old he had already done many things. I was lucky enough to be able to sing in Paris, at the Olympia, called by Bruno Coquatrix. I had first gone to sing for the Republicans, and for the Mutualité, and then people saw me because I appeared on French television and that gave me a name in Paris and also here.
In this diary he writes a lot about how he tries to be perceived beyond the protest song.
They wanted to put the label on me, and I can now play music to Ausiàs Marc. There are people for whom I have only been a singer against the dictatorship and that's it, but fortunately from the outside they have seen it differently. Here at first they only saw me like that, although if you look at the songs there are many nuances. I have not only made anti-Franco songs, because sometimes there is this or that or pure lyrics... But everyone takes what they want.
The diary also shows how he thinks about publishing the previous one, the writer's concerns, and he even imagines leaving music and writing books.
They told me this many times, and I have done something, but it is a different type of dedication, singing up and down also involves another way of doing things and I barely considered it. I have done what I believed I had to do, despite what they told me. Because the first thing they do to me is offer me to sing in another language. First in Spanish, but also in French. And then Harold Leventhal, who was Pete Seeger's manager, told me: “You come to the United States for two years and I'll make you a celebrity!” And I said no, that “I will be a celebrity in Barcelona.” But there were no records in Catalan, and the first album made with Catalan songs that had nothing to do with modern Spanish songs was 45 revolutions with Al vent, Som, La pedra and A cops.
I guess he doesn't regret leaving it, now.
Finire in beauty, say the Italians. I had seen things that I didn't like, from artists who couldn't even make it to the stage. Things don't have to be prolonged if you're not up to it, because then your voice shakes, people make mistakes, they don't remember the lyrics. I have seen cases like this, and I “rather die than lose my life,” as Cantinflas said. Viscuda life that will not return.
And haven't you missed the stage?
I have always liked contact with the public, but once the decision was made I no longer feel homesick. I could have continued singing, but I decided to quit while I was well. I thought I had already done what I had to do, and since I usually agree with myself, which doesn't happen often, I did it.
Don't you play the guitar either?
At first a little, but lately nothing. If anything, I'll play a record by someone who does it better.
