La Rioja exists, but it is not, if we unite we have to create it. The popular anthem of this land, its people and its autonomous efforts, is inextricably linked to the memory of a woman: Carmen Medrano. The singer of the trio Carmen, Jesús and … Iñaki was the voice of that time, the voice of that Rioja, of that dream forged by force of identity and desire for freedom, desires expressed in that and other songs that the street was already chanting when politicians were still doubting which direction to take. His legacy endures half a century later. And Carmen’s extraordinary voice, which was the flag of that nascent Rioja full of hope, still resonates in many hearts.
Today marks forty-five years since that sad June 2. Carmen Medrano (Logroño, 1950-1979) died at the Clavijo Clinic after undergoing surgery for peritonitis. She was not yet twenty-nine. She had her life ahead of her. Times were changing, but she wouldn’t see it enough. After the long night of the dictatorship, the long-awaited dawn was just beginning to break. Too many had remained silent for forty years, many had fought precisely for that and some even did it with their guitars and songs when not even singing was allowed. But for her everything was going to end too soon, everything except I remember her.
Mari Carmen Medrano Moreno was the second of three children from a working-class family. Her father, José María, a waiter, and her mother, Mrs. Carmen, her lifelong work. Her daughters taught her to read and write. They lived in the San Bernabé group, a small interior square at the end of La Cigüeña street. Since she was fourteen years old, Carmen worked in a textile factory driving a serger. Her training was elementary but her restlessness made her immerse herself in readings, theater and songs. And her social and political commitment led her to join the PCE. “She was one of those who took sides until she got dirty,” as her former partner, Jesús Vicente Aguirre, says.
At that time, that type of music, wherever it came from, was called a protest song. The red example of Carmen, her white voice, the green of hope and the yellow of memory were another four-color
When they started dating she was sixteen and he was eighteen. Everything united them, including music, and in 1968 they were already announced as ‘Carmen & Jesús, the only mixed duo in the province’. They performed for the first time at the School of Education singing what was fashionable: things as simple and harmless as “we are neither Romeo nor Juliet.”
“But in the first 70s,” says Jesús, “we were already committed to changing the world.” The songs that they made their own had something of that: by Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Joan Báez, Atahualpa Yupanqui, Víctor Jara, Quilapayún, Paco Ibáñez, Raimon, Lluís Llach… At that time, wherever it came from, that was called protest song
From Europe to Autonomy
After some time with the local groups Rebaño Feliz and Armonía Rota, in 1974 Carmen and Jesús decided to dedicate themselves entirely to music and leave Franco’s Spain. They settled in Paris and for two years they toured Europe singing in cultural, work and emigration centers and sharing the stage and roof with artists who would become friends, such as Joaquín Sabina. In Germany they met Iñaki, a sixteen-year-old boy who did not hesitate to join them. “It was an unrepeatable time living with emigrants and exiles who were moved by listening to ‘Long live Spain’.”
After the death of the dictator, in 1976 they returned to Spain and, as a trio, gave a memorable concert in Escolapios before a large audience eager for things to start moving. And certainly that was the beginning of an unstoppable current: the path towards democracy and freedoms throughout Spain, in La Rioja also passed through autonomy, and Carmen, Jesús and Iñaki were going to walk it at the front, shoulder to shoulder with the people . They were witnesses and protagonists of history.
His songs were the soundtrack of his time and his land: ‘My sleepy town’, ‘The ballad of San Asensio’, ‘The prisons’, ‘The battle of the verse’, ‘Masa’, ‘From Monday to Saturday’, ‘Don’t get tired, comrade’… Almost all of them were politically committed to the cause of justice and freedom, lyrics by great poets such as Miguel Hernández or César Vallejo or by friends Nano Martínez, Julián Rezola or the recently deceased Honorio Cadarso. And also his own lyrics about beautiful folk tunes.
‘La Rioja exists, but it is not’, which would become the unofficial anthem of the future autonomous community, Jesús was improvising while driving towards Pamplona, Iñaki copied it in a notebook and Carmen, from the back seat, hummed it. The melody and rhythm were provided by a friend from Bañares who whistled the typical dances of the area for them.
From town to town, often clashing with censorship and ‘authority’, they played in the most emblematic events of the Rioja process. It was in one of their performances, on July 26, 1978 in Huércanos, when some young people in the audience displayed the new flag for the first time in a spontaneous and semi-clandestine action.
And always, among that chorus of voices, Carmen’s voice rose, breathing breath into those songs and making them fly. The example of her red, her white voice singing to a dream, the green of inalienable hope and this yellow time of memory that we have left were another quadricolor.
The tribute and the silence
La Rioja seemed new and full of future. Until that fatal June 2, 1979, when everything ended for her and, in a way, for so many who loved her. She had felt unwell while in London and they wanted to return home, but by the time they arrived in Logroño it was too late. Something very deep broke that day, like a tree that sprouts and from which the storm uproots its most beautiful branch. The entire Rioja, which had taken so long to awaken from her deafness, remained silent.
A month later, on July 1, a massive tribute with ten thousand people in the bullring of Logroño said goodbye to him. On stage, Sabina, Labordeta, Imanol, Víctor Manuel, Jorge Melgarejo, Chema Purón, Elisa Serna, La Bullonera, Quintín Cabrera and many other artist friends supported Jesús and Iñaki.
“But how could I sing without her,” says Jesús today while reviewing the folders of memories, poems and drawings of his beloved Carmen, our beloved Carmen. It is not nostalgia, nor even a desire for well-deserved official recognition; They already have the greatest of all, which is to belong to the collective memory of a people. It’s just that no one has ever sung like Carmen Medrano again. And that perhaps that dreamed Rioja left with her forever.
