About Joan Manuel Serrat

About the book

About Joan Manuel Serrat

A tribute to the life and work of Serrat, on the occasion of his definitive retirement from the stage.

The author says that he has the wonderful hope of bringing the events narrated in the book not only to Serrat’s admirers, but also to a younger audience. And, in addition to telling an entire life dedicated to the music of someone who has already gone down in history as one of the most loved and respected singer-songwriters in the country, it exposes them in a historical context that makes us understand his creations even more and better. artistic.

The author admires Serrat for the loyalty of an audience that has followed him for sixty years, in addition to his songs, his moral attitude, and his social commitment. Something that permeates his songs and his public image. In this book we will learn about his beginnings, his brightest moments, his musical and poetic career, but also his shadows, his less explained corners and even his current “retirement.”

Origin and family

In the middle of the Battle of the Ebro, a young Ángeles Teresa flees from Belchite (Zaragoza) to Barcelona, ​​after the death of her parents and siblings. There she meets Josep Serrat, a widower with a young son. As a result of this union of two lonely souls, little Joan Manuel is born, four years after the end of the Spanish Civil War and the start of the Second World War. They were, of course, not the best circumstances for a birth, but perhaps that, together with the values ​​instilled by his parents since childhood, made Serrat the person he is today.

«Ángeles Teresa and Josep Serrat meet by chance, if chance exists. She and her entire family were absolutely broken by the war. He was also destroyed by all that and by the years of the concentration camp. And I suppose that the loneliness of the two characters was confused into one and from there I think that the love increased.

The history of Eurovision

It was the first days of 1968 when TVE announced the name of its representative in what was then a television event that brought together the entire family for a mandatory appointment. The chosen artist was Serrat, a young man of barely twenty-four years old who had become one of the voices of the new Catalan song. Until then, the young Joan Manuel had only sung in Catalan and that caused some concern in the Regime. The rest, as they say, is history. And in this book we will know everything that happened from the protagonist himself.

MEDITERRANEAN

He creates it, sings it, in less than a decade, in which Serrat advances, he becomes a man and a number in all of Catalonia. He continues to participate in the calls for The Sixteen Judges, which are already full. The last to arrive are Maria del Mar Bonet, Rafael Subirachs and Lluís Llach. Serrat remembers his christening with precision: his first performance was in Esplugues de Llobregat, with Juan Ramón Bonet – Maria del Mar’s brother – and Remei Margarit. Later, at the concert in the French chapel, in Barcelona, ​​where he finds himself listening to the brother of that milkmaid, the teacher from his street who took him to the Piarist school. Thanks to Salvador Escamilla, he became known and Edigsa hired him in 1965 for his first album with four songs, and in 1967 he recorded his first LP. That same year he gave his first recital in the modernist temple of his city: the Palau de la Música Catalana. Before he achieved the unusual feat of putting his “Morning Song” at number one on the national hit lists.