Love of Lesbian say goodbye to Barcelona "see you soon"

Barcelona"This is a concert that justifies the narrative of a band with 25 years of history," said the lead singer of Love of Lesbian, Santi Balmes, a while before going out on the Estrella Damm stage at Bogatell beach in Barcelona, the most crowded of the La Mercè festivities. Love of Lesbian are folding, or taking an indefinite break according to musical newspeak. They still have about ten performances scheduled in Spain and Mexico, but Saturday's at Bogatell was the last one in Barcelona.

"For us, it's a farewell, the last big concert in Barcelona," commented guitarist Julián Saldarriaga. It was logical, then, to expect that the emotion would condition a performance that began with Nadie por las calles and Cuando no me ves and that almost an hour and a half later ended with Los toros en la Wii (Fantástico) and Club de fans de John Boy, while some drones lit up the sky with the messages "LOL loves BCN", and "BCN loves LOL" (loves was a red heart). In fact, listening to the repertoire they were performing, one could find encrypted messages about the end of Love of Lesbian, such as when in 1999 Balmes sings that "there is no longer any desire to continue the show", that he "only wants to be a spectator" and when at the end of the song he invokes Jeanette's Porque te vas. And it is possible that the emotion made the musicians a bit tense. Santi Balmes brought to the stage all the tricks that have made him such a unique showman, such as the top hat and the vest, which seems like a tribute to the magician Juan Tamariz in Cuando no me ves (and later the glasses with the words "fuck you" stamped on the lenses), but it was hard for him to be up to the level of the public's enthusiasm. It was after 1999 that stage and beach began to be synchronized, and then yes, until the end.

The sound was big, wide-ranging and with a brass section, the trick that makes Love of Lesbian sound like The Cure with a trumpet. And the piano and the horns would just as soon throw a cabaret party in Me amo, as they would pay tribute to pop classics in Manifiesto delirista. "The atmosphere is heating up," said Balmes after Algunes plantes, which is Love of Lesbian dancing with Blur. And he immediately announced the presence of a "distinguished resident of Barcelona, the most honorable Manolo García!". "Honorable, no! And I am from Poblenou," replied the singer of El Último de la Fila, full of character. Together they sang, more or less harmonized, Incendios de nieve, the paradise of the lololos,and La hermandad. And as happens at every Love of Lesbian concert for a couple of years now, Balmes reminded us that "not taking a stance is a fatal way of doing politics in these times when the far right is coming (...), the fascists who present their program in Spanish and those who present it in Catalan, of which there are also some".

The final part of the concert brought a second surprise, the collaboration on Ahí donde solíamos gritar by Xantal Rodríguez, the singer of Remei de Ca la Fresca, a group that Balmes recommended without sparing praise. "No to the expansion of El Prat airport," shouted Rodríguez at the end of the song, taking advantage of the massive turnout and the emotional heat of the last stretch of the performance.

"It's the last one and it's yours," said Santi Balmes before closing the night with Club de fans de John Boy. While receiving the audience's ovation, the words "See you soon" could be read at the back of the stage... An indefinite but not definitive farewell?