La Maria: "I hope no one is offended by the audacity of telling certain things"

BarcelonaIt is not just any album, but a new cultural miracle of category by Maria Bertomeu (Oliva, 1998), Maria, one of the most notable voices of the Catalan Countries. The Valencian singer publishes Robina (Propaganda for the Fact, 2025), a conceptual album about the cycle of emotional breakage, emptiness and the possibility of recovery, divided into three chapters: Breakup, Emptiness and Falling in Love. All of this, a dozen of their own compositions that amplify the goals of The assumption (2023) and reach new ones, linking traditional structures and an instrumental richness displayed without saturation and always at the service of the emotion that she wants to transmit. In addition, María expresses herself through an understanding song, rooted in the naturalness of the popular song and touched by a lyricism fruit of a prodigious command of the voice free of effects. Pay attention, then, to the live presentation of Robina, on March 21st at the Centro Artesano Tradicionàrius in Barcelona.

What artistic challenge did you set yourself when making this album that is so special for so many reasons?

— The only goal I usually set for myself is to enjoy it and be able to express in the best way possible what I wanted to convey.

What story did you want to tell?

— I wanted to explain the recent times I have experienced and that I have had to face by going back to the psychological part, which perhaps you should review constantly.

So there is a part of your personal experience that is reflected in the album, right?

— Yes, always. Robina It's not an external character that was invented to make the album, but rather a personal story, mine, my own. And I hope that no one gets drowned by the story it contains or by the audacity of telling certain things.

Why do you think someone might be offended?

— Because it's an album that talks about the breakup of love, and that involves many things. What happens in a relationship, whether it's friendship, family or love, involves many things and affects many people and many feelings.

Unlike in romantic comedies, Robina a breakup begins and then goes through a process of understanding and healing that culminates in a catharsis that is not a conventional happy ending.

— It's an ending of acceptance and knowing the psychological theory that you should apply. It's an album that I composed from the end. I started with Sorry Maria, which is the song that closes the album. So, it was a bit like starting at the end to go back and be able to understand the story from a point of care and from the acceptance of saying: "I know all the theory, and I want to express it in the rest of the journey, in the two previous chapters."

You have a fairly extensive background in both roots music and lyrical singing, and this time it is better applied than in the previous album.

— Yes, it's been an album in which I also wanted to go much further with the voice. I had Tere Núñez as my voice assistant, and she helped me a lot in the recording. Since there are three different chapters, I wanted to highlight vocal differences in each song and especially in each chapter, so that this would be clearly evident, and reach registers that perhaps I had not yet captured in a recording.

Perhaps the turning point of the album, in terms of the way of singing, is Consecration, which you sing with Joan Marc Pérez on the piano and is one of the most daring things you have ever done.

— Yeah, Consecration and Empty one of cryingBoth songs were recorded live and there is no filter work on the voice. In the rest of the songs there is hardly any, but in these two in particular it was about looking for that live performance that would allow us to show something of the truth. They are not perfect songs, there were more perfect versions, but we have stayed with those because they were the ones we connected with more emotionally.

In contrast to Consecration, there is Who invented love? and Sorry Maria, which have electronic parts that invite you to dance. And in Who invented love? There is also an element that You commented a couple of years ago in the ARA: your admiration for Robe Iniesta and Extremoduro, which is evident in the riff of guitar...

— Yes, I really like the guitar. I'm not a guitarist, I can get by, but I don't know how to play it like Darío González or Sam Ferrer do, but I really like having it around.

I say this because it is also as if I see Robe's influence in the crudeness of some of your verses. For example: "I have my genitals removed so as to neither feel nor desire."

— I'm not good at singing with metaphors, so all the lyrics are very raw. And that's something that makes me very ashamed, but I just don't know how to do it better.

I wouldn't be so modest. You have verses with very powerful metaphorical meanings, like "You have your bun too curly for him," which make you think about the stories behind them.

— I'm glad you find the metaphors useful, so I'll always try; it's like my personal challenge.

How have you worked on your voice to reflect the emotional journey that is on the album, between songs like Rip and the habanera Butterflies?

— Rip, being the beginning of an album, I interpreted it thinking that when we break up with a person there is a part of you that is happy, because you need to break up. But then, in Who invented love?, the story changes and you are much angrier. Rip and the habanera have a connection because the album is cyclical: it breaks, empties, makes you fall in love, it breaks, empties, makes you fall in love. I wanted that in Rip I wasn't as angry as I was in Who invented love? but that there was a point of connection with the habanera and Forgive Maria.

Butterflies It's also a good metaphor for falling in love again.

— Yes, of course. I was very fond of the habanera. I knew I wanted to nail another habanera, something in homage to Vineyards are being uprooted, which was the habanera that changed my life. I have a special devotion to that genre in particular.

And you connect with a tradition of singing while breathing that goes from Silvia Pérez Cruz to Rita Payés.

— I enjoyed it very much. When I sing the habanera, as I do with the fandango and the uno, I'm not thinking about anything, I feel more at home.

And in the final stretch you take it to America.

— Yeah, Butterflies It became chacarera, I don't know why, and I really liked it. Psychologists are very good and very bad, because they make you suffer in therapy. In the end, you go for it, and they make you lift the carpet to remove the dust; that's evil, but it's what you need, to cry about all that evil. And I was revisiting artists that I listened to when I was younger; for example, Julieta Venegas, who is an artist that has screamed at me since I was little, that you put her aside but she's like your mother of music, I know she's not going to let me down. And that's how chacarera came about.

In the press release, musicologist Josep Vicent Frechina, who is an institution in world music, says that the album is "a beautiful handful of raw songs." What do you think?

— The raw flesh thing is quite defining of the album because I made it as it was, crying a lot and with a lot of rawness and viscerality.

Speaking of viscerality, in November, just after the DANA tragedy in l'Horta Sud, you sang My wake in the program The Revolt from Spanish Television. What feeling dominated you? Anger?

— We felt a great deal of helplessness and sadness for the victims, but it was a sadness tinged with helplessness and anger. There are things that cannot be avoided. You can stop a fire, but not water; older people always say this. But the murders that were committed, because they were murders, could have been avoided. Therefore, it was a great anger and a rage and helplessness that is uncontrolled, that is still there and that will remain forever in everyone's hearts. And that was very evident that day.

How are people reacting in the affected areas?

— I study at the Catarroja Conservatory, which is damaged, and we are now giving classes in another centre. There are still mountains of cars and rubbish. With the cars you see something very strange in Catarroja, which is the city without law: people park wherever they want, there are banished cars yet to be moved, and there are also new cars because, of course, life goes on and people have to buy the means of transport that gives them bread... It is a very strange feeling, and sadness prevails. People are sad and angry. If there are no political measures from politicians, people will always be angry.

In the previous album, the family was very important, especially through the grandmothers. What role does it play in Robina?

— The family is also present, perhaps in a more crude way, in another role, but also in the form of support, and in a very implicit way at the beginning of the album and especially at the end, in the last song.

Just the last song, Sorry Maria, has a curious point of view. I don't know who she sings it, and whom sings to her. You to yourself?

— It's very strange. My psychologist asked me to look at photos of myself when I was very little. I was always very serious when I was little; I'm a person who doesn't smile unless I'm feeling very well. In 90% of the photos from when I was little, I look very angry or very sad. In the end, mental health was always lurking there. It's a song I wrote while looking at the photos that the psychologist asked me to look for, and it was like singing to that little girl who was sad and asking for forgiveness on behalf of people who hurt you when you're a little girl and you don't know what's happening because you don't understand it.

The ones that "stoned your child's heart."

— Yeah.

In some songs you use religious liturgies, such as consecration and worship, as a mask to place your personal story.

— Yes. I must say that I am an atheist and I do not believe in God or any religion. In therapy, it is true that the psychologist's job is to put you in the center, which is what religions do: put a person in the middle and separate them. In this case, it is not that, but rather putting a person in the middle, yourself, and you go out and observe what is going on in your head and be objective in order to detect the good and the bad, to accept them without blaming and to be able to improve from there. That is the map.

Has all this therapy had a healing effect?

— Yes, I have been going to a psychologist since I was 17, and I am 26. I started very young. I fell into depression when I was 17 and luckily or unfortunately I had to start therapy very early, when it was still said that going to a psychologist was being crazy. I was very sad because my parents have always been hard-working people, my father is self-employed, my mother worked in a factory at that time and was unemployed, and they have always been mileuristas, and it meant taking away my salary from food and clothing to be able to save my life, literally. I don't know if I could be a mother, because it is very complicated and you have to have a lot of emotional and affective responsibility to be able to do it well and not create traumas in mental health. It is very complicated. Therefore, I assume that I will always go to therapy, but that is fine.

In Sorry Maria You sing verses like "You're afraid to see me alive," which make me think about what it explains Emma Zafon in the book Married and silent.

— A girl, from birth, grows up in a mentality and in a more sexist than feminist environment. This is reality. Therefore, I think that it is quite feasible that there is a connection. Yes, it can be interpreted in this way.