The bakery, the only establishment open at the intersection where I'll be picked up in the early hours, has a Catalan name that suggests tradition. The young, uniformed, Latina workers speak Spanish. Many of the customers do too. To avoid the cold from the automatic glass door, which opens and stays open, I stand at the back of the establishment. The speaker with the music is above me. Reggaeton songs play nonstop, and I understand that it's more for the enjoyment of the workers than the customers. I can do nothing but pry.

Oriol Rosell (Barcelona, 1972), critic and cultural promoter, was talking with an editor about the possibility of writing a book. They were talking about music, and at one point, the editor said to him: "You know what's wrong with me? I can't understand why my children like reggaeton." And Oriol replied: "And shouldn't this be the book?" It was from that conversation that the book was born. Killing Daddy: Why You Don't Like Reggaeton (And Your Kids Do) (Cúpula Books).

"I like it when you're hot". This phrase from Bad Bunny's song Sorry BB:/, In Catalan we could translate it literally and, nevertheless, we would understand that this hot It doesn't refer to temperature, but rather to sexual attraction. The translation would go unnoticed, and compared to the uploaded content of any other reggaeton song, it might seem like a rather mild phrase.

In Catalonia we have an infallible method to measure the popularity of a musician: appearing in the choral song of the Marató de TV3. In the 2020 edition there was Miki Núñez, Antonio Orozco, Els Catarres, Nina and Dyango. And Lildami, conclusive proof that urban music in Catalan has definitively entered the collective imagination of the masses. It has taken almost twenty-five years to stop thinking of local rhyme as an anecdote and to start thinking about a scene that is still incipient, but with a promising future. It's a question of normality: if young people from all over the world are asking for urban the native language has to take its rightful place. The wind is blowing in our favour, but the key is the emergence of a number of young, talented and uninhibited musicians who have made a splash. These are the key facts and names of the past, present and future of music in Catalan.