Els Catarres: "It's not easy to have a band, even if it may seem otherwise."

BarcelonaLos Catarres reach their fifteenth anniversary with the album Paratroopers (Halley Records, 2025), and a certain peace. They still sprinkle some songs with electronic rhythms, but remain faithful to conventional instrumentation and distance themselves from so-called urban music. Roser Cruells, Jan Riera, and Èric Vergés speak a few days before launching a tour that begins on May 4th on the steps of Girona Cathedral, as part of the Strenes Festival program.

Did you set any challenges for yourself with this album?

— Jan Riera: In the creative process, we always got stuck with lyrics because there was so much music and so few lyrics. And this time, we decided to do it the other way around: write a lot and then find the music.

— Eric Vergés: It was a challenge because we had done very little with Els Catarres. There are songs on the album with a lot of lyrics, like FortuneAnd once you start working like this, you generate material differently.

?Fortune Is it a song that you owed to yourselves as a group?

— Roser Cruells: It perfectly represents the spirit of the group, which is always about looking on the bright side. It's also an ode to all the people who have followed us and are with us in our daily lives, who make our lives more beautiful and easier.

— E.V.: From a certain point on, you begin to see that what life is really about is cultivating human relationships, experiences, feelings, emotions. And at the end of the journey, I hope that many years from now, you'll be able to say it was worth it.

You say this isn't a stroke of luck, but have you ever felt like the group wasn't something you enjoyed anymore, but rather a way to make a living?

— RC: I don't.

— E.V.: No, because we would have already given up, because it's not easy to have a band, even though it may seem otherwise. There's a lot of tension. Obviously, it's not always easy, you don't always make money. And if you do it, it's because you really love it.

— JR: You have to be passionate about it. People only see that we're playing, but there are a thousand other things behind it: the designs, the merchandising... There are 15 of them, the paychecks. And if you're not passionate about it, it's ultimately crap.

?Fortune Did you do it in the key of Catalan rumba because the lyrics called for it?

— E.V.: The lyrics came from hiking, and musically, I tried to adapt them in many ways. I came up with Catalan rumba one day while I was listening to Gato Pérez. We've always listened to Catalan rumba, although we'd never performed it before, and it suited it very well. It could also have been more EDM or more rock 'n' roll, but the idea was not to repeat styles.

The other side of Fortune is Fuck off, which does have an EDM sound [electronic dance music] epic.

— RC: I think they share the conceptual scope. Fortune It is an ode to the people who are by your side.Fuck off It talks about overcoming difficulties with the people you have by your side.

— JR: Musically, it's an indie song that got messy. The bottom line is, you're really telling me to "fuck off."

Is it too much to have letters in the drawer?

— E.V.: I have a lot of them, but they're on Gmail. I'm not as romantic as he is, who has a lot of notebooks.

You were talking about trying to do different things within the same album, and two very different ones are the song with Roger Mas and the one he did later with Massilia Sound System.

— E.V.: We proposed it to Roger, and he immediately agreed. It was wonderful, and it gives the song a special weight because he's a person of great character. It's a luxury to have someone like him singing our lyrics. And from another perspective, Massilia Sound System is also legendary for us, having gone to France to see them years ago. Maybe not many people here know them, but we don't care. It's something we wanted to do, like making one. check in life.

This year I'm playing at both Cabró Rock and Canet Rock. What's the difference between these two festivals?

— E.V.: Well, Canet is a long time and the space is very large, although Cabró has also grown.

— JR: It's a blessing that in a country like Catalonia, there are two festivals like these dedicated almost entirely to Catalan music. The main idiosyncrasy of Canet Rock is that it's a 12-hour thrashing...

— E.V.: I don't know how people endure it, it's incredible. And the funny thing is that there are very young people singing songs from bands that have been around for 10 or 15 years, and you say, "You must have been two years old when we started, or you'd even been born!"

He did a collaboration with Figa Flawas, but he hasn't really delved much into urban music.

— E.V.: It's not our thing. It's not our thing by generation, and I don't think it's our thing by taste either. Sometimes we incorporate elements to make them interesting, but always from a place of sincerity. We would never do it in our lives to try to ride a wave that isn't ours. I don't think even our fans would like it.

Do you remember what music you listened to fifteen years ago?

— RC: More or less the same as now.

— JR: At that time, I listened to Jovanotti a lot. Yes, I really liked Italian rock: Jovanotti, Vasco Rossi. And I liked Extremoduro, and I still like it a lot.

— E.V.: I love everything: metal, rap, the Beatles, Antònia Font...

— RC: Fifteen years ago, I was into La Troba Kung-Fú a lot. I also listened to jazz, and bands that have never gone out of style, like Green Day, which I've been listening to since I was 8.

And now what music does Spotify tell you you listen to?

— RC: I hardly listen to music.

— E.V.: I mostly like metal. Now I'm with Bad Omens and Sleep Token.

What's your best music-related memory? And what's the one memory you'd like to forget?

— JR: Some really nice things have happened to us, but I'd suggest meeting Lluís Llach and having him record a song with us.

— E.V.: One of my best memories of music is from a moment that really left a mark on me: when we were 16 and we left high school to take the train to Barcelona to see a concert by the Swedish band Millencolin. It was at Sala Razzmatazz, back when it was still called Zeleste [in 2000]. It was a totally new experience for us, and we were amazed. It was like, "Wow, that's it! This is the energy you should give off at a concert."

— RC: Music has been with me my whole life, even though I never thought I'd dedicate myself to it. It's always been incredibly present, ever since I was very little, when my father would play songs he'd written for my sister and me. And my best memory of Els Catarres, perhaps also of Lluís Llach, was that it was like seeing someone with something truly magical about them. That had never happened to me with anyone else.

And the memory for...

— JR: Barcelona Neta's announcement: "He who cleans is as clean as he who doesn't dirty."We didn't write the song, but we sang it.

— E.V.: It did not succeed like the one of the Mamzelles with thePackaging where you go.

— JR: Perhaps one of the worst moments of Els Catarres was when Èric became hoarse at the end of the tour. All my principles at the Sant Jordi Club, in November 2019.

— E.V.: Yes, that moment was pretty horrible, but we got through it and continued the concert after a while. We'd been learning that concerto all year with an orchestra and such, and I guess it all took a mental toll on us as well.