"This party is a party among friends. Thanks to those of you who have come from Barcelona and other places in the world, like Sant Joan Despí, to share such a happy day, which has allowed me to be one more day among people I love and with whom I have shared my life. At the end of the day, they give me this medal because I am old. That's how it is. Life has a flow. And I am very happy to be here and to be able to climb the stairs. I don't really like the path to where I'm going, but since I know I can't change it, run and get as much good out of it as you can."
Showing the medal of Honor from the SGAE, the General Society of Authors and Publishers, to which he began to contribute almost five decades ago, in 1968, with the song La mort de l'avi, Joan Manuel Serrat started yesterday like this in front of an auditorium where Ana Belén and Víctor Manuel, María Pagés, Estrella Morente, Montxo Armendáriz and Iñaki Gabilondo had come to accompany him. And he humorously thanked Eduardo Mendoza for his words: “Today is a very pleasant day but also one of reflection, for which Mendoza's laudatio has been very good for me, with which I will not say that I disagree, because I have been very good".
Incarnation, like Serrat, of that select group of creators in which high culture and popular are one and the same thing, Mendoza began by joking that when he was asked to do the laudatio “I immediately said yes, very honored and happy, because I know him.” , I admire him and we are friends, and because I was excited to make a laudatio, which I have never made one.” “Then I regretted it, because a laudatio is redundant when they give an award. But it was a good opportunity to review the life and work of Serrat, with whom I have several things in common: we were born the same year, we are not the same age because I was born very early and he was born very late. That is important and the difference is obvious,” he said with a laugh.
And he recalled that the author of Mediterráneo “had the childhood and adolescence of a clever boy” and “in times of restrictions, rationing, hunger, repression, family rosary and summary executions, he was vaccinated for life against any type of hypocrisy and imposture. . And all his life he has been an honest man of the left when being left was a way of being before the world.”
He recalled that he began singing in the nova cançó, with a spirit of demand and protest, but that he also moved among the Barcelona gauche divine, “a group that wanted to have a good time.” She participated in both groups because her songs transcended each other. They were declarations of principles. He was young, his songs sounded good, he had great musical sense, he wanted to live and he became a symbol of protest and also a sex symbol. How do you do that? I wish I know".
And he stressed that he was “a committed man and when one commits to the cause of freedom and against oppression, he chooses well, because he will never lack work. They put him in jail and he had to leave. When he returned, his popularity had increased a hundredfold. In the transition, nothing like the song represented the illusion linked to fear, uncertainty, desires and contradictions of that fantastic time.”
Mendoza concluded with irony: “I didn't want to finish the laudatio without something bad to say. I've been trying hard for days and I've talked to many people, but I haven't found anything. So, Joan Manuel, thank you and a hug.”
