Ivette Nadal: "I was feeling healthier than ever... and then MS came along"

BarcelonaIvette Nadal (Granollers, 1988) has two major projects in hand: on March 28, at the Barnasants festival, she will premiere a show with songs by Pau Riba and Jaume Sisa, and in May she will publish the autobiographical book Poetic justice. Just as she has done with her six previous albums and four poetry books, Ivette will have to combine her vigorous artistic career with fragile health. Since she was 9 years old, she has lived with an eating disorder that has had her in and out of hospitals, and now she has received another diagnosis: multiple sclerosis.

Do you remember the last time we saw each other?

— Yes, during the Catalan Book Week. I confessed something to you that I don't think I'd ever told outside my family circle.

And in one of your last messages on Instagram you publicly explained what you told me that day.

— I didn't want to tell it, because I don't want to accumulate my artistic or personal history behind illnesses, but there were certain rumors that something was wrong with me, perhaps worse than what I have. I went to places and people hugged me with very sad faces, and I decided to explain it.

In that message you said: "In recent months, my silence has been translated into rumours." If you keep quiet, it's because you keep quiet, and if you speak, it's because you speak.

— I had no desire or intention of getting sick again, much less of having a chronic and degenerative disease like MS. I thought it was better to tell it myself, and not have someone else tell it and make it seem older than it already is by word of mouth.

You also said: "I now understand many symptoms that were unknown to me in the last two years."

— Yes, I had been going to my GP every week for two years: today my foot hurts, today my eye hurts something, now I have spasms in my neck... You have to think that I have a disease like anorexia, which is very emotional and psychological. They told me: "You are very hypochondriac, you are anxious." I had to change doctors and go see one who didn't know me and say: "I want you to do an MRI on my head."

But did you suspect that you might have multiple sclerosis?

— No MS, but maybe something worse. I thought there was something wrong with my head. Unfortunately, they told me that I had been suffering from MS for almost three years.

How have these last few months been since you were diagnosed?

— Fucking, really fucking. I had been recovering from anorexia for five years, something that no one had ever anticipated could happen. I was doing personal training, doing a lot of exercise, eating and taking protein, taking great care of myself. It was the time when I felt the healthiest physically, and I thought: "They told me it was chronic, but in the end I will get over anorexia."

Since I was 9 years old...

— Since I was 9, yes, and at 30 I stabilized. And then this comes along.

Do you feel it as the straw that broke the camel's back or is it precisely all that strength accumulated over so many years of fighting anorexia that helps you face the diagnosis?

— To be honest, it makes me feel guilty. I don't know why I have MS. I have no idea, and I never will, but having lived with anorexia for so many years is like I have earned what I'm going through.

When was the last time you asked yourself why?

— This morning, last night, constantly. I dedicate myself to writing and singing, and I have realized that I communicate quite well with others, but I have not communicated well with myself. Both illnesses have a point of giving an image of great strength – understanding that anorexia makes you seem very weak – but you have to be very strong to live with it from 9 to 30 years and more or less hold on. I wish I had said: "I can't take it anymore." I think I have been too strong.

Where do you find comfort lately?

— I find solace in philosophy, and lately I go up to the monastery of Sant Benet once a month to see Teresa Forcades. Maybe it sounds a bit surreal, because I come from a different world, very liberal, with many unbalanced loves, but instead of resorting to conventional psychology, which I don't like at all, I try to heal myself from another place.

But are you a believer? Do you seek faith there?

— I pray every day, since I was very young. I don't know if I'm a believer. I pray because I'm afraid and I ask for protection for myself or for someone in my family. And I know that I misuse it, because prayer should be about gratitude, and I do it out of fear.

Can you summarise in a few ideas what Teresa Forcades has taught you?

— It's difficult to summarise. To begin with, she is explaining to me the life of a saint who was the first to be considered to have "miraculous anorexia", as it was said in the year 1300. In the Middle Ages, there was a lot of fasting, and Saint Catherine of Siena was surely the first person to have anorexia. I had written poems to her without knowing much about her life. I had a very harsh idea of this saint, the miraculous anorexia. Teresa talks to us about everything: politics, philosophy, medicine... I listen to her.

Yesterday I listened again to the last interview I did with you on the radio, in July 2023, and I remember thinking, "Let's see if in the next interview with Ivette we can talk only about music and poetry."

— I would have loved it too. It's a shame that we have to talk about the disease, but the diagnosis is very recent. Obviously, I wouldn't like my personal or artistic image to be just that of a person burdened with illness. But things happen to all of us. We are all bound to illness, and now that I visit hospitals every week I still sometimes think that we should be grateful.

A lot of things happen to a lot of people, but you also have to think that focusing on one person and one body is a bit of an exaggeration.

— Yes, I am angry, and I think it is unfair. There are many good people who have not chosen to have any illness and they do. I think that the illnesses that happen to me are the fault of the dialogue I have with myself. I try to be very affectionate with others, except with music critics [laughs].

You don't treat music critics well?

— I don't treat them well because they don't treat me very well, and then I get a little angry and answer back.

The last show you are presenting is in a few days, on March 28, at the Barnasants festival: Ivette Nadal sings the galacticsWhat will we see?

— Look, it's a concert that I didn't choose, it was proposed to me. It's a somewhat poisoned gift, because they are two great authors who have many followers: Pau Riba and Jaume Sisa. I've tried to take great care of it. I've contacted musicians who have worked with them. I've spoken to Pau Riba's family and I've called Jaume to tell him that I'll do it with all my love. For the critics who come to the concert: I'm not a galactic person, I'm much sadder, I'm not crazy, but at this moment in my life when something so surreal is happening to me, this project is a gift.

In your songs you have always talked about yourself, you have looked inward. Here you look at the galaxies. I don't know if this project allows you to escape.

— Yes, I think it's an exercise that's very good for me. Pau and Jaume are two people I really like. For me, it's an opportunity, after this concert with the Galacticos, if I can still sing, to take a break from my life.

Have you been told that you will be able to continue singing?

— Yes, in principle yes. What happens is that I have to undergo some treatments. One of the injuries I have is in my mouth. It doesn't affect my voice, but I have to undergo rehabilitation.

It's no longer about opening yourself up to the world, but to another galaxy. What can you find?

— Maybe I should not take everything so seriously, let go and laugh, like I used to. It might give me the opportunity to reconnect with humor.

You wanted to be a comedian when you were little.

— Yes, of course. I wanted to be Lloll Bertran. And, in fact, at home, despite the introspective moments, I am very playful with my friends, but I have not been able to fully develop it.

Who or what is the last thing that made you laugh?

— Oh, my God. When I was very young, I used to do a lot of imitations: Palomino, a zipper, various things... And when I lived at my parents' house, I would go up the stairs and always do some imitation. From the age of 9 to 30, I stopped imitating voices, and now, from time to time, when I go to my parents' house, I do some imitation. And my mother tells me: "You're back."

With so much to think about yourself, do you have time for others?

— I think that I have been ill precisely because I have worried a lot about others. I have worried a lot about my family unit, at my parents' house, with my brothers. And as for my son, although I have been ill for a long time, hospitalized, coming in and out, I don't think I have ever left him. I have had the support of my mother, my mother-in-law, who have been by my side. He never thought that I was hospitalized. He thought that I was going to school and that they were going back to teach me how to eat. Perhaps the one I have neglected the most, and I am sorry, is my partner.

The latest literary project you have is an autobiographical or testimonial book that has been requested from you for a long time.

— What I am trying to do with this book is to do poetic justice to my wounds, which have led me to have anorexia. I started in the world of poetry and music when I was very young, I was 14 years old. And it is true that I became involved with a male figure who was perhaps twenty or thirty years older than me. And now the subject of consent is very fashionable. I am not too interested in talking about it, but reflecting on it I think that they did me a lot of harm. What I have been rationalizing, with this book, is the relationship between hunger and love. We all go through many experiences, and it does not mean that they are to blame for the illness, but rather how you manage it. I, at 14 or 15 years old, until I was 20, did not have the maturity to manage things with people who were perhaps twenty or thirty years older than me. Surely in the art world, as in others, these unbalanced relationships are normalized.

From what you tell me, you had non-consensual relations when you were a minor, something that would be absolutely reportable now.

— Yes, not consensual, and some without the possibility of saying yes or no. Without knowing what this is. I didn't know what sexual relations were, what love was like. From my point of view it is not denouncable, because in some way it also attracted me, like the figure of the teacher, but yes, with the knowledge and feminism of today... Wow, it shakes me.

What is the latest dream you have right now?

— Well, to have a decent life. To be healthy, and to do fewer things but with much more valuable people.

Do you think you've had a decent life so far?

— No, I don't think so.

And the last fear you have?

— Man, I'm afraid of leaving my son and my partner. Of not having a quality of life. Of course I'm afraid, yes.

Now I would like to ask you for the last song you are listening to, but in your case, tell me a song by Pau Riba and one by Jaume Sisa that you are particularly excited to sing.

— It's difficult because they have a very powerful work. About Pau I would tell you An angel passed by, and Sisa, The home drawn It's the one I feel most comfortable singing.

The last words of the interview are yours.

— Let this not be the last conversation and let us not talk about illnesses in the next one. I think that, of all the people you have interviewed, I am the only one who has nothing, who has no awards, who has no great recognition. It is very good to give value to the conversation, beyond success.

But how many records have you made? How many books have you published?

— Yes, I have done quite a few things. Out of stubbornness. I have made six records, I have made four books, and I have done everything with income and that has a value. And alone. I don't have a business. management to watch over me.