“These are times of fear, but also of hope. Governments and people often fail to make a fair assessment of migrants’ situations, including what they leave behind. Migration is a feeling of loss.”
Joan Manuel Serrat could well have lent his surname for a few days to the city of Guadalajara.
They would have called the city Serrat, and the mariachis wouldn’t be singing Sabina’s “Y nos dieron las diez y las once…” but rather “Tu nombre me sabe a hierba…” or any other song from Serrat’s extensive musical repertoire. (How would that song sound with mariachi, one might wonder?)
The truth is Serrat conquered Guadalajara, just as he could have done anywhere in Mexico.
He was an honored guest at the Guadalajara International Book Fair, where he engaged with both young and not-so-young audiences, presented a book alongside Jordi Soler, received an honorary doctorate from the University of Guadalajara, and was also given the Key to the City—the highest distinction a city can grant. Symbolically, of course, because the people of Jalisco had already given it to him by flocking to every public appearance made by the Catalan artist.
And Serrat showed us many sides of himself…
He got a bit upset during his talk with young people due to overcrowding and the tremendous noise from those left outside demanding to enter. “I came with great enthusiasm, but this is impossible,” he said, standing up from his chair—so abruptly that not even a friendly tug from Benito Taibo could get him to return to the conversation right away.
He complained politely: “They told me to take this as a break, and I’ve already been working for four days,” he said with that irony packed with truth. “It’s just that he’s getting old,” a fellow journalist whispered to me.
The truth is Serrat conquered Guadalajara, just as he could have done anywhere in Mexico.
He recalled his years of Mexican exile, full of nostalgia and wisdom: “This country didn’t just open its arms and heart to us.”
He offered advice to young people: “Discipline and work are the only things that can help.”
And he gave a masterclass in Catalan sincerity during the Q&A: “Don’t tell us your life story—just ask the questions.”
With that brutally honest tone, he opened his session at FIL Jóvenes.
“These are times of fear, but also of hope. Governments and people often fail to make a fair assessment of migrants’ situations, including what they leave behind. Migration is a feeling of loss. One of my best-known songs, Mediterráneo, speaks to this in a way. The Mediterranean has become a sarcophagus, polluted, the product of environmental policies,” Serrat said, indignation evident on his face and in his voice.
Serrat himself suffered the feeling of having to leave his country for political reasons, and having lived so close to the sea, close to the people, he has a very clear view of a world full of injustices.
“We’re living in a very miserable world; tyrants strip migrants of their possessions, lock them up in concentration camps, build fences. You cannot do that to humanity. We’ll soon see it in the United States; we’ll see how they manage without them, persecuting them. Migrants may be poor, but they are not idiots… What else, Benito?” he asks his interlocutor.
“What is poetry for?” Benito Taibo asks him, adding: “It reminds me of when someone asked Borges that question, and he replied, ‘And what are sunrises for?’”
For Serrat, the ability to sing is intrinsic to human beings. “We all sing,” he says. “No one sings badly—just differently.”
The conversation continues with ups and downs. Noise and distraction accompany the talk.
“When I think of Mexico, I say: cabrones, chingones,” he jokes, and everyone laughs. “I don’t believe much in vocations—instinct is what moves me.”
Serrat’s speech continually returns to themes of injustice, social issues, and economic problems—so many that they reveal a Serrat deeply worried about the times we’re living in.
“So many things are happening that it becomes easier to predict the end of the world. There is so much contempt for humanity,” he adds.
This Catalan singer-songwriter, now retired from the stage, has written many of the most memorable songs in history, set Spanish poets like Miguel Hernández and Antonio Machado to music, and carried out some of the most important tours in Spanish-speaking countries.
“I began writing poetry for love, in all its forms. I believe that a society that doesn’t care for one another is doomed to fail; messages of love travel faster. I still bet on hope, even in these dark times—fear leads us to disaster,” he says.
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