2024-04-27 09:45:21
Singer, composer and one of the most important Catalan voices of several Spanish-speaking generations, Joan Manuel Serrat In October, she will receive the Princess of Asturias Award for the Arts 2024.
“I found out by phone this morning, they spoke to me about the Foundation to tell me the result of the jury’s vote and they asked me if I had to do on October 28 and I told them that if I had something to do, I would postpone it,” the musician said with a laugh at a press conference.
“I received the news with joy, satisfaction, gratitude, excitement and surprise because it is something that one does not expect. Receiving it as the final point in my career frankly seems like a good culmination to me,” said the interpreter of Penelope. The award was given “for the scope of an artistic career that transcends music,” declared the Princess of Asturias Foundation.
Recognized by sing in Spanish and in Catalan, Serrat He has always embraced political causes in his songs, like when he stood up to the Franco regime and refused to participate in Eurovision for not being able to sing in Catalan and said he was “accompanying these causes.”
“As I do not have a list of all the causes that I have addressed, I could not say which one I am most proud of, but the truth is that I feel happy with my life, when I come to reflect, I can obviously distinguish the clearest moments from the murkiest and the most satisfying moments from those that are not.
“But once I have done this, I take it all together and I feel comfortable with what I have done in this life and I hope that life will be generous and give me allow you to continue enjoying a little more,” he added.
Likewise, he spoke about the recognize for expressing himself artistically in two languages.
“I have always done it with the certainty that I am a person who has both as a way of understanding and existing; They coexist in me quite naturally and without the need for dictionaries to go from one to the other,” she said at the event where he also spoke in both languages.
Known as the boy from Poble Secbecause of the Barcelona neighborhood in which he grew up, his deep sensitivity in his lyrics made him part of the New Catalan Songa cultural and social movement from the late 1950s until 1968, although Serrat’s first success came in 1969, as a result of his tribute album to the poet Antonio Machado.
Serrat, always a politician, went into exile in Mexico towards the end of the Franco regime and during that time he did not hesitate to sing, in an uncomfortable way, about the military dictatorships that plagued Latin America during this time.
“A defender of dialogue in the face of tension, the work of Joan Manuel Serrat is an exponent of his inalienable vocation to build bridges between countries and generations,” recognized the jury of the Princess of Asturias Foundation in his minutes.
This “Latin American Barcelona”, As he defines himself, he retired after a marathon tour in 2022, in which he toured different parts of the world until returning to his native Barcelona.
The award, worth 50 thousand euros, will be received on October 28 in a ceremony to be held in Oviedo, Spain.
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2024-04-27 09:45:21