Next Sunday, November 30, I will be in Mexico and I will ask for forgiveness. I will apologize to myself for not sharing the last concert of his farewell tour with Joaquín Sabina. The Guadalajara Book Fair, the most important in Spanish, will be dedicated on this occasion to Barcelona to highlight the importance of the city and Spain in contemporary culture. I will be thrilled to be there, in the sister country, but I confess that I would be happier to share his last concert with Joaquín. And it’s not that I don’t know what’s going to happen, because I’ve already had the opportunity to witness three of them on this tour. When I went to one of them, Joaquín asked me: what number is it? And when they replied, with Sabine intention, that there were 69, he said smiling: then everything will be fine. Soon after, thousands of people were singing their songs.
Poetry has a lot to do with loneliness. We try to be honest, to specify the adjective or verb, to commit ourselves to every word with our conscience. And when friendship becomes intimate, it seems that each other’s songs, poems and stories are part of one’s solitude in a small circle. After his exile in London, I was lucky enough to meet Joaquín more than 40 years ago, when he returned to Granada, the city where he had studied and become a poet. Since then we have shared books, shipwrecks, loves, summers in the bay of Cadiz and even cold winters in each of our hearts. So I might be tempted to mistake Joaquín for a personal treasure. This is why, when I see the Movistar Arena full and thousands of people emotionally singing their songs, I feel the conviction that behind the loneliness there is an us who still maintains the right to melancholy and shared hope. In Mexico I will apologize to myself and then move to the neighborhood of joy.
