Alfred García: "I fall in love in Catalan and I love in Catalan"

BarcelonaRumba and the Llobregat Delta permeate Alfred García's new album (El Prat de Llobregat, 1997). I love you if I love you (Música Global, 2025), and it's the first album by the musician from Prat de Llobregat in which the majority of the songs are in Catalan.

On the new album, the landscape of El Prat de Llobregat is more prominent than on previous albums, right?

— This album, like my first poetry book and my entire creative imagination, stems from specific geographical corners. These are the natural spaces of the Llobregat Delta, especially those of my hometown, El Prat de Llobregat. They've always inspired me greatly because they've been a part of my life since childhood. El Prat de Llobregat is one of the places that inspires me most when it comes to composing and creating. It's a space where you can hide. In fact, it has many hidden corners that I'll never mention because otherwise, they'd lose their magic.

Yes you can talk about the Gomis house, in Ricarda, which is where you filmed the video clip of the song Star.

— It can be talked about, and it can also be claimed right now. The video clip ofStar What we did with Álvaro Soler was the first project to be completed after the Ministry of Culture purchased the Gomis house. It will be like a museum dedicated to cultural works and exhibitions related to the environment, and especially related to the balance between architecture and nature.

What is it like to stay at the Gomis house, so close to the airport?

— The airport is 400 meters from the Gomis house and the beach promenade... For those of us from El Prat, the noise of the airport is already internalized. It's part of the spell we Prat residents are under. And it's also an inspiring aspect. The airport is always talked about as something rather negative, but the truth is that it has also made us who we are; we have a very powerful cultural and infrastructural muscle thanks also to the airport. And my artistic imagination is largely defined by airplanes and the airport, because this duality between the green natural spaces of the delta and the beach with, let's say, the asphalt and the large metallic birds, is part of our landscape, our horizon.

You've made an album in which Catalan rumba has a notable presence. There's one track that's explicitly so, Catalan rumba, but the trace is present in most of the songs.

— Catalan rumba is a part of my life. Until now, only in a private way. My uncles, Pepe and Toni, had a band called Rumba Brava. Toni also managed some of the biggest names in rumba and flamenco, and he was my manager for a year after I graduated from the academy.'OTHe helped me a lot, he helped me learn a lot. And my uncle Pepe was the person who raised me while my parents worked, alongside my aunt Cinta. While I was growing up, he taught me music with the flamenco guitar and his repertoires, both rumba and flamenco and Latin American folklore, from Los Panchos or Los Tigres del Norte. It's an influence that has been hidden until now, not out of shame, but out of respect, for the genre and because everyone in my family is an expert in rumba. That's why I've taken the time to let rumba blossom, like spring, within me. I've really enjoyed it. I'd already had some contact with Night cream, the song with Txarango, which had a more rumba-like cadence. But yes, rumba is now part not only of my genes and my DNA, but of my discography.

Txarango is the melodic reference of the song you make with Carlos Sadness, My destiny.

— Yes. Txarango has been the great icon of fusion, perhaps the last icon of fusion as we understand it within the framework of Manu Chao, Macaco, Amparanoia, and Ojos de Brujo. I think they've left an indelible legacy, not only on the Catalan scene, but on the global fusion scene.

You finish the album with Always like this, a piano ballad that you made with Ainoa Buitrago and that has nothing to do with the rest of the album.

— Always like this I composed it with Ainoa Buitrago in 2022, when my relationship with my partner at the time ended. It was a song that expressed, above all, that thing of always wanting to stay the same with someone, that time doesn't pass when you're with them. That day Jorge Drexler was doing a masterclass with some kids; we showed him the track and he loved it. He said, "You'll release this, right?" I wasn't sure. And note that on a rumba album, this song infiltrates, but I think it makes perfect sense to end the album with this song. It's not something done baba-style, but it makes perfect sense with what's coming next.

What will come next?

— This is something I'll leave open-ended.

So, let's get to work with the certainties. There's more Catalan than ever on your album. How did you find yourself? Was it the Catalan rumba that led you to Catalan, or did it just come out that way?

— Catalan has been a part of my life since I was born. I speak Catalan with my mother and Spanish with my father. This has also left an important mark on my work, especially in my first collection of antipoetry and countercultural poetry, which was so surprising when I released it because everyone thought I was a friendly singer-songwriter, but they found the verses thorny. Catalan has been present in my maternal side of the family and has been a basic foundation in my writing in Catalan as a poet and as a singer-songwriter. I love you if I love you, emerges from a conversation with her, who asked me: "What does "I love you" mean?" From this, I realized that it doesn't matter if I fall in love with someone who speaks Spanish, English, Russian, French, or Italian. In the end, I fall in love in Catalan and I love in Catalan. Furthermore, it has coincided with a time when the team I'm currently with is very much in favor of my career being able to develop in Catalan as well.

What is your best memory related to music?

— I couldn't choose just one; that would be unfair. But it would probably be the last time I wrote a song.

And any memories, also related to music, that you would like to forget?

— There's something we shouldn't forget, but we do need to prevent it from happening again: all those unnatural deaths we've had in the music world, an industry that has gone savage. I think of artists like Amy Winehouse, Michael Jackson, Kurt Cobain, Antonio Vega, Antonio Flores, Camarón... These are artists who, unfortunately, left us too soon. Now that we talk so much about mental and emotional health, and that there's so much talk about psychology, we should better support artists. It's essential to take care of artists because they work with emotions and are very fragile. Just as paintings are transported with security so nothing can happen to them, we should take better care of artists. We artists are like paintings or like those impeccably ceramic vases. We are very fragile.