Tomorrow Sunday could be a historic day. For several reasons. Barça can win its 19th League since Cruyff arrived as coach in 1988, just when the Quinta del Buitre was winning the last of its five consecutive leagues. To be champion, Barça has to win today in Pamplona, and Madrid has to lose tomorrow to Espanyol. Complicated yet poetic. Since Johan arrived, Barça will have won six more leagues than Real Madrid, something that had not happened in such a long period in the entire history of Spanish football. It must be for that reason that its Florentineza already takes care from its media terminals to turn the League into a minor title. It has no other choice. What matters is the Champions. Well, this year, not so much.
Read more Votes for 50 “bucks”
Since winning leagues is no longer historic, we will stick with another event that will take place tomorrow. On Saturday, September 3, 1988, Cruyff made his debut in the League as Barça coach, at Camp Nou. He won against Espanyol 2-0. Seven days later, on Saturday, September 10, in the same venue, one of those concerts that mark several generations was held, Human Rights Now!, a concert for human rights. It was organized by Amnesty International, and had this lineup: Bruce Springsteen, Sting, Tracy Chapman, Peter Gabriel, and Youssou N’Dour. It was a world tour and in each country a local group played. In Spain, the chosen ones were El Último de la Fila. Tomorrow, Sunday, May 3, El Último de la Fila returns to play in Barcelona. At the Estadi Olímpic. Not a single ticket left. It will be historic, and here its Florentineza will not be able to deny it because massive concerts in stadiums are not its strong suit.
Quimi Portet and Manolo García mixed everything, the everyday with the unusual
Quimi Portet and Manolo García formed a duo that represented a lot of good things. Quimi, from Vic, the Catalonia of the eight Catalan surnames, and Manolo, son of people from Albacete, who grew up in an immigrant neighborhood, Poblenou. They represented the richness of the mix. Not only of purebred Catalonia and the charnega. They mixed everything. Rock with flamenco. Spanish guitar with Arabic chants. Surrealism with hyperrealism. The everyday with the unusual. Quimi’s electric guitar with Manolo’s inimitable voice, and his tambourine. Mix the world and mix us with it.
One does not realize how much a band can influence their life until years pass and they listen again to the songs that marked them at 15, 20, 25 years old. Last Saturday I was able to go to the first concert of the new, and surely last, tour of El Último. It was in Fuengirola. Life passed before me in slides. So many emotions are not good for a cataplectic. I held up, despite hearing again verses I had stored in I don’t know what place in memory. They came out automatically, as if I had sung them yesterday. Legendary phrases you have resorted to in love, in heartbreak, in failure, in defeat, in politics, in the everyday, in life in general.
Read more U.S. announces withdrawal of its troops from Germany
I always tend to want what I don’t have. You are worth what you have, it can’t be helped. Since you left me I am a puppet. I gather myself in the temperance of the truce that the anesthesia of memory gives me. Where were you then when I needed you so much? Credentials of possession, what nonsense. There are no other worlds but there are other eyes. That the days go by, they are rivers. And in the end, only envy and ambition. And no one is more than anyone else. It’s not that time heals everything, but it can help. If what you are going to say is not more beautiful than silence, don’t say it. I love you as one loves for the first time.
Thank you, Manolo, and thank you, Quimi, for everything you have taught us. Looking forward to a peach-colored day.
Read more Sánchez demands the release of the Spaniard from the flotilla ‘kidnapped’ by the Israeli government
