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Joan Manuel Serrat, in the statements you have made, you say that, although you have retired from the stage, you are still alive. I suppose that turning 80 will lead you to consider countless topics that you will take advantage of to be able to express and transmit with that emotion that characterizes you, as it has always been. Who knows if you will surprise us with new compositions and increase the number of accumulated scores.
Your followers long for the beginnings in which we discovered your talent in those songs that you accompanied with the sound of a guitar. Over time, you became one of the greatest exponents of Nova Cançó. After so many years of work, we can say that you are one of the most notable singer-songwriters in the history of Spanish music.
I'm not going to go into discussions about whether one album is better than the other, because I really like them all, but surely there are many of us who have extraordinarily appreciated the poems that you have set to music by one of the greatest poets of the generation of the 98, Antonio Machado.
Who has not repeated the lyrics of the Song of Songs countless times, whose basic understanding is instantaneous and the verses do not offer major ambiguities, helping us to enter that path that we are traveling and that "must never be trodden again."
I don't know if it is due to the depth of the feeling, or the passion for transmitting it that manages to enter the hearts of those of us who hear that message, thus broadening our lives. Also, thanks to you, the verses of that other great poet from Orihuela, Miguel Hernández, continue to resonate in the memories of many people, in that song to freedom that you claimed with words like: "For freedom I bleed, I fight, I live." .
It is true that if there is a song that talks about you, it is Mediterráneo. In 2024, it was chosen in the TVE program "Our Best Song" as the most relevant song in the history of Spanish popular music, and in 2010, Rolling Stone magazine chose it as the most outstanding song in Spanish pop music.
Likewise, if there is a lyric that is fascinating, it is that of the song Penelope, whose story is inspired by the Greek myth collected by Homer in the Odyssey. However, you updated it by changing the sea for the platform of a train station, a place where she waits "with her brown leather bag and high-heeled shoes" for her beloved to return.
We don't know if the other woman's name, Lucía, may have something to do with your personal history. It may be a mystery that we will never be able to decipher, but those words: "There is nothing more beautiful than what I have never had, nothing more loved than what I lost" makes us think that that woman was someone very close to you, although that love was lost.
Another soft, melancholic song, full of tenderness, almost perfect for all of us who have felt infected by the cadence of the rain on an autumn afternoon is Ballad of Autumn, with some captivating verses:
It's raining.
Behind the glass
it rains and it rains,
On the half-leafed poplars,
over the brown roofs,
on the fields, it rains…
In Today can be a great day, we listeners feel motivated to take advantage of the time with that positive mentality that you transmitted to us, emphasizing the responsibility of exploiting all the opportunities that are presented to us. It is true that taking advantage of life and living it to the fullest "depends, in part" on each of us.
It is not easy for all artists to reach the level of attraction that you have achieved with your music. The great value of your songs is that the message in them becomes part of us. Listening to them or singing them helps us not lose track of who we are and were.
For many people, it is enough to listen to a few bars to delight in situations that we have experienced, where moments of all kinds appear: happy, sad, melancholic...
As you said when you said goodbye to the stage definitively at your last concert at the Palau de Sant Jordi: "Nothing more, thank you very much. It has been a pleasure."
