For more than 20 years, talking about Andy or Lucas has brought with it the question: “Which one is it?” Since forming the duo in 2003, the two Cadiz artists have been treated as the same unit for better or worse, placed in the same bag to highlight both their successes and their controversies. But in this 2025, coinciding with the end of their farewell tour, their differences began to be much more evident than their similarities. Andy and Lucas are now history. His Instagram profile is already described as “CLOSED”. Now Andy (Andrés Morales, 43 years old) is alone and only a month has passed since the duo’s last concert – held on October 10 in Madrid – to take the first step in his solo career with the release of his first separate, Puppetwhich, according to the press release, “portrays the moment of consciously letting go of a toxic relationship to reclaim your light.” “After a lifetime of singing with another person, starting alone is a bit strange, but I’ll get used to it, it’s another way of having fun, like starting from scratch,” he tells EL PAÍS.
It was not necessary to use imagination to deduce that the Session 53 of Shakira with Bizarrap was full of reproaches towards Gerard Piqué or whatever my nameby Leire Martínez, was his showdown with Van Gogh’s La Oreja. Nor do you have to do it to realize it Puppet is a dig sung at his former duet partner. “Yes, there are some,” Andy acknowledges with a half-smile. “My intention was to say what I felt. But hey, it’s like this, we already gave birth,” he says the day after the release of the song, which will be part of the album Only –which he intends to release after Easter— and the subsequent presentation tour – for now the dates in Madrid (20 April), Barcelona (29 April) and Cadiz (25 September) have been confirmed -.
Andy has no further contact with Lucas and barely mentions his name during the nearly hour-long interview and refers to him as “the other side.” “I wasn’t happy, I guess we don’t have to be anywhere and I wasn’t well, I wanted to leave. The weekend came when I had the concert and I woke up with a terrible body, I woke up feeling sick, nervous, scared. Thinking: ‘What will happen today’. This is a lack of life,” he explains. “Now I’m free and if I make a mistake, it’s my mistake,” he exults when talking about his new solo stage, where his current partner, the make-up artist Clara Gonçalves, accompanies him as part of the team.
The last verse of Puppet He says: “Our story was credible to everyone, but my mind does not forgive, and so much contempt on your part that my person does not deserve cannot be erased from my memory.” The relationship between Andy and Lucas finally ended last May, when they had a big argument which, according to the former, was the last straw that broke the camel’s back. “The day we fought, everything broke for me. It became a relationship that would lead to nothing and it was impossible to understand the other person. My goal was to sing, do my work and go home. I didn’t want to keep fixing anything because I saw it was useless, apart from the fact that I didn’t feel comfortable,” she says. However, after that big discussion, there were still months of concerts together which he now describes as a “nightmare”: “Going on stage with a room full of people who sing your songs, want to hear you and inside you say: ‘I’m dying’, I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”
The two singers from Cadiz have known each other since childhood and decided to found the group when they met in high school. Together they have sold more than two million records, won awards such as Ondas and were even nominated for a Latin Grammy. Andy’s intention before the discussion was to “keep giving it some more trouble” as a duo, but ultimately his solo project was accelerated following the high-profile demise of Andy and Lucas. “What I have left is not resentment, it’s not anger, it’s pity. It’s a shame to say I couldn’t stand it anymore,” he laments. “I didn’t like it, I saw comments from people on social networks saying it was tasteless, that I didn’t participate, but I was involuntarily forced,” he says.
The duo’s last concert at the Palacio Vistalegre in Madrid left some much-commented images of Lucas singing ecstatically in the front row while Andy cried in the background. “I had a terrible time for three concerts,” he recalls of that moment: “I got off the stage, we went out into the corridors and then I burst into tears. And when they put me in the car I had an anxiety attack. Literally. I spent 10 minutes crying in the car. And I calmed down. And it was over. It was over because there was no going back. I never had to go on stage doing the same nonsense again. The next stage I went on would be whatever I wanted. And how I would want it. It was like if I was about to realize my dream. The new Andy is clear that under no circumstances will he sing with his ex partner again. “Not even dead, come on, I’ll open a restaurant first,” he says. It doesn’t even cross his mind to be part of a couple again, even with another person. “No, I’ve already experienced it. Now I have to make my own mistakes,” he insists.
However, don’t worry, fans of songs like They’re about love OR I loved her so much because he makes it clear that his next tour will also include the group’s repertoire. “If I deny it, I’ll be shooting myself in the foot, I’ll get off to a bad start,” he reflects on his past. Looking to the future, he says he’s not looking for fame or controversy, just to work, keep making music and have fun. “I never want to hurt anyone, nor the other party, nor anyone else. I’ve always been in the shadows and I liked it that way too. But now I’m the one who has to be on the front line and, by measuring my words and not disrespecting anyone, you can have a good career”, he confides.
His life has always been linked to music. Already as a child he participated in the carnival companies of Cadiz, a tradition he maintains, and is part of the long list of singers who took their first steps on television, in their case in the musical program I see, I seelike Blas Cantó, India Martínez or Abraham Mateo. He suspects that his two sons, to whom he dedicates one of the songs on the new album, have inherited his musical talent, but also his shyness. “I can’t make them sing,” he says, smiling. “The little one (Andy Jr., five years old, the result of the relationship with his ex-wife, Trini Bueno) yes, but he sings only for me. I don’t know what quality he has yet, but he has an ear, he likes music”, he says. “And my girlfriend (Claudia, 18 and whose mother doesn’t have a public profile) I know she sings very well, but for me she doesn’t sing.”
Fame and a legion of teenage fans came to him when he was in his early 20s and he admits it was difficult for him to assimilate at first: “From one day to the next I couldn’t go out on the street and my head couldn’t process it. I remember seeing the magazines of SuperPop of my sister with the Backstreet Boys on the cover and suddenly seeing me. I couldn’t understand it.” More than two decades later, he is very aware of everything. He knows that since the controversial farewell of Andy and Lucas, all his movements are watched with a magnifying glass and every sentence he writes on social networks is examined for a double intention. “I knew that this situation would end fatally, and it will continue, it will have a tail, but hey, life goes on and I will not do what others want, neither for money nor for fear of anything,” he guarantees.
He says if he could speak to the Andy of 23 years ago, when it all began, his message wouldn’t be a warning, but something much more hopeful. “I would tell him that I’m very proud of him,” he admits slowly: “With his flaws and his virtues. That’s who I am.”
