Joan Manuel Serratthe notable Catalan singer-songwriter with more than fifty years of career and author of – among many albums and songs – Mediterráneo, considered one of the best songs in Spanish music of all time, has been honored this Wednesday with the Princess of Asturias Award for the Arts 2024.
Joan Manuel Serrat (Barcelona, 1943) He has recorded more than 500 songs, more than 40 albums and has set music to the verses of the greatest poets in Spanish.such as Antonio Machado, Miguel Hernández, Pablo Neruda, Mario Benedetti, Rafael Alberti, Federico García Lorca or León Felipe.
Author of hits like Penelope, Love words either To each his own themeSerrat announced his retirement from the stage in 2021 with the ‘El vice de canto 1965-2022’ tour, which closed with a memorable performance at the Palau San Jordi in Barcelona on December 27, 2022.
Serrat was a pioneer of the so-called Catalan Nova Canço and a prominent voice against the repression and injustices of the Franco regimewhich earned him arrests, fines and even exile in Mexico for a year.
Joan Manuel Serrat, during his last concert in Barcelona, on December 23, 2021. Photo: AFP
A resignation that remained in history
In 1968 he resigned from performing at the Eurovision Song Contest in 1968 representing Spain because he could not sing the song in Catalan. The, the, thewith which Massiel, his replacement, won, doing it in Spanish.
The jury of the Princess of Asturias Award for the Arts 2024 praised the figure of the Catalan singer-songwriter as a “civic reference” whose work has been at the service of tolerance and shared values.
The minutes read by the president of the jury, Miguel Zugaza Miranda, director of the Museum of Fine Arts of Bilbao (northern Spain), highlights “the scope of an artistic career that transcends music and becomes a civic reference, adding to the lyrics of their songs the force of the collective anthem with universal will.
BARCELONA, 04/24/2024.- File photograph dated April 19, 2026 of the Spanish singer-songwriter Joan Manuel Serrat during an interview with the EFE agency in Barcelona. This Wednesday, Serrat was awarded the Princess of Asturias Award for the Arts, the foundation that grants the distinction announced. EFE/ Quique García
For the jury, in Serrat’s work, “with deep Mediterranean roots”, the art of poetry and music combines “at the service of tolerance, shared values, the richness of the diversity of languages and cultures, as well as a necessary desire for freedom.”
“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,” concluded the jury, which this year had to choose between fifty candidates from twenty-one nationalities.
This composer, poet and also actor had been proposed on many occasions for the Princess of Asturias Award for the Arts, an award that last year went to the actress Meryl Streep and for which this year more than fifty candidates had been submitted.
His relationship with Argentina
Serrat landed in Argentina for the first time in 1969. Alfredo Capalbo, his first manager here, had a hard time inserting him into television, an almost exclusive platform for fame in those times. He had to convince the “tsar” Alejandro Romay, but he succeeded.
And as soon as Serrat debuted in one of the most influential programs such as Saturdays of Kindness on Channel 9, which hosted Hector Coire (an interview with Hugo Guerrero Marthineitz and the presentation in Circular Saturdays with Pipo Mancera), a couple of songs were enough to win over the public.
The farewell to Argentina. Joan Manuel Serrat, in the last concert at the Movistar Arena. Photo: Martín Bonetto
In that year 1969, a romance was born between Serrat and the Argentines that would never end. She swept away Your name tastes like grass to me and no difference or political allusion prevented the young Catalan, in a jacket and T-shirt, long hair and sideburns, with striking polka dots, from immediately becoming an idol.
Serrat quickly gained the same quota of followers as a Palito Ortegaa Sandra or a Leonardo Favio, but with a different repertoire. At that momentor he felt like “a troubadour”in the style of the French tradition or the one that – among us – was linked to folklore references: Atahualpa Yupanqui, Jorge Cafrune and even Eduardo Falú, whom he highlighted in his first visits.
From there, he continued coming every time he could -with the mandatory period imposed by the military dictatorship-, filling stadiums or with his partner Joaquín Sabina. Until his farewell in 2022, at the Movistar Arena.
