The moments before the mascletà are tense, there is emotion in the atmosphere. Thousands of people crowd around the Plaza del Ayuntamiento de València. The disorderly bustle seems ungovernable, but some chords that come through the loudspeaker system capture the attention of the local fans, who to the surprise of unsuspecting tourists sing in unison: "I will leave my land for you, I will leave my fields and I will go far from here... ”. They didn't know him, but even twenty-something Valencians know hymns like 'Un beso y una flor', 'Libre' or 'Noelia' by heart.
It's been 50 years since he left, who would have thought, Luis Manuel Ferri Llopis, renamed Nino Bravo perhaps in search of an Italian resonance in keeping with the times, died at the bloody age of rock greats, a couple of years before the thirty. The road, which for pre-moved musicians was a worse enemy than drugs, ended a brilliant career, as it did shortly after with another singular interpreter, Cecilia, the other musical trauma of those born in the 60s.
The authorized biography of Darío Ledesma tells that a great-grandmother an opera singer and a grandfather director of the choirs of an orfeón are the family history that unites the lamented interpreter with a musical vocation. There was something in those genes that endowed the young Luis Manuel with a unique voice, endowed with a depth that none of his successors reached.
For those who, like the current mayor of their town, Aielo de Malferit, were barely eight years old when the BMW with the Gran Canaria license plate left the road in a curve on the N-III, towards Madrid, on April 16, 1973, it is strange to think that that famous neighbor, that man who appeared so much on television, was barely 28 years old.
Today marks the 50th anniversary but it was yesterday, at the express wish of the family, when in this town surrounded by mountains to the northwest of the Vall d'Albaida, with just 4,625 inhabitants, the Nino Bravo Museum was reopened, which was still in the process of being reform since February of last year, and which opens to the public equipped with new audiovisual material and personal items donated by the singer's family.
The expectation generated has surprised the mayor himself, Juan Rafael Espí: "Four buses have arrived and there are people from Colombia and Venezuela who have been in town for a couple of days waiting for the inauguration," he tells us.
And it is that 50 years have not been enough to erase the mark that Nino Bravo also left on the other side of the Atlantic, in a continent to which he dedicated a great posthumous success, 'América, América', a song composed by Herrero and Armenteros that he recorded a few weeks before his tragic accident and went to number one weeks after his passing.
“Every August 3, coinciding with the date of his birth, we hold a Nino Bravo festival in the town that we have been streaming since 2019,” the mayor of Aielo tells us, “and if there are 1,500 people following him live, there are other so many through the Internet, and most of them follow him from Latin American countries.”
Along with the renovated museum, a new documentary about his life was also presented yesterday -'Nino Bravo, vivir', directed by Miki Blanco and Pilar Ávila, and produced by RTVE for the program 'Essentials'- and these days his voice resonates on the radio , televisions and podcasts dedicated to glossing his figure, indisputable as only those who leave soon are, without time to decay or make mistakes. Forever young, Nino Bravo does not return because he never left, because his songs never stopped ringing and, more importantly, they never stopped being sung.
