Manolo García made a proposal to the thousands of people filling the Lluís Companys Olympic Stadium: we want to offer you joy and for you to give us joy. And the offer was enthusiastically accepted, of course. Because we all want joy, and that night of reunion we were sure of achieving it. We also wanted to return it to the musicians who, with their songs, were about to transport us to the best years of our lives. And so it was.
Manolo García and Quimi Portet –El Último de la Fila– and the musicians accompanying them on this unexpected tour have set out –I believe– to experience these concert nights as a gift. Those of us who have wanted (and been able) to participate also experience it in a similar way: with the purpose of joy. The joy of remembering when El Último de la Fila was the essential soundtrack to our parties; when all of us, them and us, were very young. And if there is one evocative thing, it is music, which can transport us to a place, a time, and a state of mind very easily. Forty-one years have passed since El Último's first concert, Quimi Portet recalled with a big smile.
El Último de la Fila is not the only one who has wanted to reunite many years after leaving the stage. The brightest stars of the international music universe have done so. Great idols, musicians whom we respect from afar with a reverential air. But Quimi and Manolo are just the opposite: musicians we know we have close by, who are like us, who have grown old like us. Not by chance did they dedicate the concert to the small farmers, ranchers, and Catalan fishermen.
Their way of experiencing the monumental success of El Último de la Fila, as if it had taken them by surprise, makes us think that this could have happened to any of us. They sang and played the guitar, we danced and did the backing vocals. They are one of us.
After all, at the Montjuïc concert, there was indeed a bit of nostalgia, too. The mature women and men sang and danced, and even jumped a little (there were moments when it was as beautiful to look at the audience as at what was happening on stage). But, meanwhile, something softened inside our chests, thinking about the times that will not return or the people who are no longer here.
Quimi Portet said it in an interview with Xavier Grasset: these songs were important for us, but we know they were also important for many people. How important, indeed, is the soundtrack that has accompanied you throughout your life! How it helps you to reconstruct not only the facts and situations, but the way of living them!
The other day, then, at El Último's concert, besides the exchange of joy there was nostalgia. Many of us became nostalgic, there's no need to hide it, and I dare say that they probably did too. But it was an insurgent nostalgia, far from the laws of men, without having fully accustomed ourselves to being adults, knowing that we only have love and that love is our only ambition. A good nostalgia. Thank you.
