The moments before the mascletà are tense, there is emotion in the atmosphere. Thousands of people crowd around the Plaza de l'Ajuntament de Valencia. The disorderly commotion seems unmanageable, but some chords coming over the public address system capture the attention of the local fans, who, to the surprise of unsuspecting tourists, chant in unison: "I'll leave my land por ti, I'll leave mis campos y me iré lejos from here..." They did not know him, but even Valencians in their twenties know by heart hymns such as Un beso y una flor, Libre
It's already been 50 years since Luis Manuel Ferri Llopis left, who would have guessed, renamed Nino Bravo perhaps in search of an Italian resonance in accordance with the time, dead at the cursed age of the greats of the rock, a couple of years before the thirties. The road, which for pre-lived musicians was a worse enemy than drugs, put an end to a dazzling career, as it did shortly after with another singular performer, Cecilia, the other musical trauma of those born in the sixties.
Darío Ledesma's authorized biography explains that an opera singer great-grandmother and an orpheon choir director grandfather are the family antecedents that unite the mournful performer with his musical vocation. There was something in those genes that gave the young Luis Manuel a unique voice, marked by a depth that none of his successors achieved.
For those who, like the current mayor of their town, Aielo de Malferit, were barely eight years old when the Gran Canaria-registered BMW left the road at a bend in the N-III, heading for Madrid, on April 16, 1973, it is strange to think that that famous neighbor, that gentleman who appeared so much on television, was barely 28 years old.
Today is the 50th anniversary of his death, but it was yesterday, at the express wish of the family, when in this town surrounded by mountains in the northwest of the Albaida Valley, with just 4,625 inhabitants, the Nino Bravo Museum, which was in the process of reform since February last year, and which opens to the public equipped with new audiovisual material and personal objects 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 50 years have not been enough to erase the mark that Nino Bravo also left on the other side of the Atlantic, on a continent to which he dedicated a great posthumous success, América, América, a song composed by Herrero and Armenteros which he recorded just weeks before his tragic accident and which reached number one weeks after his death. "Every 3rd of August, coinciding with the date of his birth, in the town we hold a Nino Bravo festival that we broadcast by streaming since 2019", the mayor of Aielo tells us, "and if there are 1,500 people that the are still live, there are quite a few others via the internet, and most of them from Latin American countries”.
In addition to the renovated museum, a new documentary about his life was presented yesterday - Nino Bravo, vivir, directed by Miki Blanco and Pilar Ávila, and produced by RTVE for the program Imprescindibles - and these days his voice is echoing on radios, televisions and podcasts dedicated to glossing over their figure, indisputable as they are only those who leave too soon, without time to decay or make mistakes. Forever young, Nino Bravo is not coming back because he never left, because his songs never stopped playing and, more importantly, they never stopped being sung.
