Ana Belén (Madrid, 1951) is incombustible. If you are not turning through the theaters from all over Spain, you are shooting a movie, a series or recording a … LP This year, he has touched the presentation of an album, ‘I come with new eyes’ – at the point of publishing – and an extensive musical tour, the first in six years, under the name ‘More D Ana’. The ‘Tournée’ will take you to Bilbao on May 16, with a stop at the Euskalduna and tickets already on sale.
– I had been on tour six years. How has this new tour been created?
– I wanted to meet live music again and on stage. It has been time since the last tour but I have not stopped working and I have done other tours as theater actress. But I already wanted to prepare for a new album and defend it on stage.
– Are you going to combine the new songs with the big hits on the tour?
– Of course, I will try to make a balance to please people and also myself, which is very important. when you talk about release new works, some people are scared of the repertoire, but in addition to the new issues, the usual repertoire will also fall.
– How does the Euskalduna concert face?
– A lot of desire, I really want. Whenever I have gone to Bilbao, both as an actress and singer, I have had a very good connection with the public, and I look forward to and enthusiastically repeat.
– The first single from the album has been a bachata composed of actor and playwright Jorge Usón.
– It is that Jorge Usón is part of a group called Decarneyhos. We shot together a movie last year and taught me the album they had taken out and it seemed great. I said: “This song, ‘Bachátame’, I love and has many resonances with me.” So I have recorded it and Jorge has been very generous. In addition, in the film we have made Jorge also sings and has a great vozron, as a good Aragonese.
– He is talking about ‘Islands’.
– Yes, it is still pending release date.
– After half a century in music, what continues to motivate you?
– More or less the same as when I was a young lady. When I started in music, a few years passed until I set out to do it seriously and there Victor helped me a lot. I always say that it does not matter if you have a good voice or bad voice: the fact of being able to enjoy music, to sing while listening to a song in your team or on the radio is to release freedom. I keep moving that, that emotion. And then there is something else that is to be able to communicate. We need to communicate with people and the stage is a fabulous means to do so. I also like to risk, as you are doing new jobs you try not to accommodate.
– Other friends of his fifth, such as Joaquín Sabina, already undertake the withdrawal.
– It’s a shame, what do you want me to tell you. His followers and his audience have to feel it a lot. But well, Joaquín is a great creator and writer and will continue writing there. I understand that you retire from the stage because it is hard work and you need to be 100%. Sometimes the body asks to stop. And you have to respect it because it is a decision made by the artist, who owns his work and himself. The same with Serrat, who has made a long life that involved many months in Spain and then out of Spain. He no longer does them but it is still very active and working. That you get off the stage does not mean that you give up who you are, what you have been and what you are still.
– The one that is missing is Julio Iglesias. Do you know anything about him?
– We have no relationship for many years, so I can’t goss you from it. Victor was the one who treated him the most.
– At this step you will be the last active transition icon.
– I don’t feel an icon of anything and I don’t like to be. I am a person who has worked as a child and is still passionate about what he does. And while people continue to think of me, continue offering me theater functions, calling me for a series, for some movie, and I can organize a tour as a singer or record a record, because here I will continue.
– But I have to ask him for the past when he is just 50 years of Franco’s death. How do you remember?
– Well, my memories are black and ugly. I was going to say gray, but no, they were black and insolent times, rude, rude. But among all that, voices and people left thanks to which many could breathe. Fortunately we managed to get out of shit, because we have been shitting for many years.
– José Sacristán told me that he associated Franco’s death to the pioneer strike of actors, where you were too.
– The strike was a few months before, in February. I had just released ‘Antigone’ in the theater and the three days the strike is mounted and he stops everything. It was an unusual fact, even with Franco alive for the first time he stops everything, everything that had to do with the show and even television. What happened put what came later in the entertainment world.
– Speaking of theater, do you have plans in view of the tables?
– At the moment impossible, this year with the album and with the tour, impossible. But for 2026 I have projects, yes, what happens is that I have not even stopped to decide which ones I will do. But yes, there are.
