El Último de la Fila: "The world we lived in as children projected us toward the absurdity that has been our lives."

BarcelonaThey arrive at the Ateneu Barcelonès to talk about the return of The Last of the RowManolo García wears a denim jacket. Quimi Portet, a mid-season blazer. "I look like Manolo's lawyer," says the inter-regional star with the sense of humor that also permeates the press conference. "We are at your disposal if you have any easy questions that we haven't studied," Portet asks. "We deserve that joy," adds García. The joy of a nine-concert tour that will begin on April 25, 2026, in Fuengirola and will then stop at the Lluís Companys Olympic Stadium (May 3), Roquetas de Mar (May 16), Madrid (May 23), Barakaldo (May 30), A Coruña (June 7), and the Ciutat de València Stadium (July 4). Tickets, with prices ranging from €71.50 to €104.50 (including booking fees), go on sale this Thursday at 10:00 a.m. on the Ticketmaster website.

[Update. Subsequently, and after selling out tickets for the first shows, El Último de la Fila has added three more concerts: one at the Lluís Companys Olympic Stadium on May 7, another in Barakaldo on June 5, and another in Valencia on July 9. Tickets for these three concerts go on sale on May 30 at 10 a.m.]

It is the return of an artistic partnership that has left as a legacy one of the most important songbooks of Spanish-language music. For the moment, they rule out expanding the legacy with a new album, although they will release a new song that is still "in the after-dinner phase." It will be a return with historical accomplices of the duo: drummer Ángel Celada, bassist Antonio Fidel, keyboardist Juan Carlos García, and guitarists Josep Lluís Pérez and Pedro Javier González. Although they will be stadium concerts, Portet and García are clear about where to put the icing on the cake. "We won't experiment. We'll play the songs that have brought happiness to people and to ourselves," says Portet. "The songs will do the work," concludes García. A little while later, they both attend to the ARA.

What do you remember from those Los Burros y Los Rápidos concerts at Razzmatazz in 2016, which in retrospect can be considered a prologue to El Último de la Fila's 2026 tour?

— Manolo García: It was fantastic, as always when you meet people you've laughed with. We're a team working to bring a magical project to fruition. Do we have a workshop for making snails? No. We have a workshop for writing songs and playing them, and it's something that works and makes us happy. And now we'll do the same: with a white beard, but the excitement is the same. When we haven't played for a while and the reunion arrives, I always find that the first day of rehearsals excites me.

At those Razzmatazz concerts he handled nostalgia very well.

— Quimi Portet: There was a lot of Los Rápidos, a lot of Los Burros, and at the end there were some songs from El Último, but very few.

Are you afraid of nostalgia?

— QP: No. Besides, after a certain age, nostalgia is positive, it's creative. If you're young and floundering in nostalgia, there's an element of depression and sadness. But for people who are over 60, nostalgia should be allowed, because they have every right. There's a certain amount of time behind them and a provisional nature of time in front of them, let's say. It seems to me that as a tribute to having been on this planet, you deserve to use this nostalgia creatively. Nostalgia is the fuel that fuels our forward movement.

Manolo, from El Último de la Fila's repertoire, which song do you like most that Quimi composed? And you, Quimi, which of the ones Manolo composed?

— MG:I can't get used to it.

— QP: I really like Manolo's. Silver planes and Pencil and ink.

I can't get used to it because?

— MG: Sometimes Quimi would come with a song already written. Not just an idea or a few chords, but the whole song: lyrics, music, melody. Normally, the singer invents melodies, but I found that I loved what he brought me. There are a few of those that Quimi brought, like Dear Milagros and I can't get used to it. Of course, there must be some complicity. Keep in mind that, aside from my lyrics, I've only sung Quimi's lyrics.

— QP: Writing for someone else is very difficult. You have to think about the intersection of two worlds, yours and theirs. And they have to be things they can handle emotionally, especially if you're talking about the things we used to talk about when we were 30, which were very important things. Now we write about what we can: I've gotten to the point of writing about writing. But at 30, 40, 45, you write about very important things. And writing for someone who's your friend is relatively complex.

AND Silver planesWhy, Quimi?

— QP: Something wonderful happens to me with many of the songs that Manolo has written. Silver planes It transports me to the Poblenou neighborhood. I say I'm from Vic to be a show-off, but I grew up in Guinardó, which you could say is the upper Poblenou. There's Poblenou de Mar and Poblenou de Munt. And it transports me in many ways: with the smells of the factories, the grease from the trucks, the bars, everyone with mechanic's heads eating cheap paellas, drinking Terry's cigalons, and smoking caliqueños and farias made in Lleida. It transports us to a world we share because we've lived it. We were talking earlier about nostalgia as a creative force. There's also geographical affiliation. Obviously, we're Catalan, we come from where we come from, but also important is the specific geographical affiliation to neighborhoods, to the workings of working-class neighborhoods that have completely disappeared, a world of incredible liveliness. At 6 in the morning, there was a chicken of trucks, and snails, caliqueños, and mixtures of anise and muscatel. Silver planes It transports me, and Manolo does it with the right touch. I mean, he doesn't do it pedantically, but naturally. It's the world we lived in as children, and it propelled us toward the absurdity that has been our lives, up and down.

As an audience, what is the best and worst thing about a stadium concert?

— MG: Wow! On the one hand, the party is important: 40,000 or 50,000 people together enjoying songs, laughing, singing. A place like this [pointing to the Ateneu Barcelonès auditorium] is certainly better for a concert, because everything sounds better and the proposal is more sincere, sonically speaking, because it doesn't need a lot of fuss with lights or anything. You can put on a few little lights, but the important thing is the songs. Now, in a stadium you have a collective party where the most important thing is the 50,000 people. And what we do is provide the fuel, which are the songs, so they have a great time. It's happened to me, I've gone to a big concert and I've looked at the stage, I've looked at the screens, very well, but when I looked at the people I thought: "Wow, that's powerful."

— QP: If it's technically sound, everything's fine. There's discomfort, yes, but there's also the pleasure of being part of a crowd of 50,000 people united by something concrete, in this case, emotional.

I remember a goosebumps moment at a concertIron Maiden at the Olympic Stadium, with everyone singing along Run to the hillsAt that moment, it wasn't so much what was happening on stage as the 50,000 people singing together.

— QP: We saw Paul McCartney in Philadelphia many years ago, maybe in 1993. I still remember it as the best concert I've ever seen. It was one of those American baseball stadiums. We were the only guys wearing long pants in the entire stadium. I was amazed at how good the songs sounded. Hey Jude, MichelleAll these songs sounded magnificent, even the most intimate ones. And you experienced them in a fantastic way. Well, you have to accept that the dimensions are what they are, that the bass drum isn't boom, but rather BOOM! And if on top of this BOOM there's a voice that goes WHOOP!, well, that's it. I mean, it's simply a question of proportion.

Do you remember the day you decided to disband the group?

— MG: The last concert was on March 30, 1996, but we hadn't talked about it then, saying it would be the last. Normally, we'd finish the tour and months later start writing songs and thinking about a new album. But we realized we weren't... And it took us two years to announce it. In January 1998. It all dissolved very naturally. We were 40 years old, and it was a good time to start going solo. We were eager, each of us in a very clean way, without any additional problems. There was no further history. The issue of egos and all those stories that normally happen in groups, of jealousy and such, didn't exist in our case.

— QP: If we hadn't broken up, we would have taken a long vacation. We were tired. A record deal was also coming to an end. A lot of things were happening, and there was fatigue, fatigue.

— MG: There was a psychological, mental, and physical exhaustion. And we also didn't want to be slaves to our status as a very famous and highly anticipated side. "When will there be a new tour, when will there be a new album?" We wanted to break away from that dynamic.

— QP: This is like going to the casino, everything going well, and then you go to the counter to cash in your chips and collect your winnings. Quime, we're friends, we respect each other a lot, we collaborate punctually... But at some point you have to go to the counter and say, "Listen, I have these chips, I'm here to cash them in." I've seen cases of people who have died and haven't come to the counter to cash in their chips.

— MG: The simile Quimi used is perfect. Life has given us this, which has been very good, but we shouldn't be stuck here, hooked. Everything should be natural, all natural.