The singer-songwriter Joan Manuel Serratwith more than fifty years of career and author of ‘Mediterráneo’, considered one of the best songs in Spanish music of all time, was honored this Wednesday with the 2024 Princess of Asturias Award for the Arts.
Serrat (Barcelona, 1943) has recorded more than 500 songs, more than 40 albums and has set music to the verses of the greatest poets in Spanish, such as Antonio Machado, Miguel Hernández, Pablo Neruda, Mario Benedetti, Rafael Alberti, Federico García Lorca or León Felipe.
Author of hits like ‘Penelope’, ‘Palabras de amor’ or ‘Cada loco con su tema’, Serrat announced his retirement from the stage in 2021 with the ‘El vice de canto 1965-2022’ tour, which closed with a memorable performance at the Palau San Jordi in Barcelona on December 27, 2022.
Serrat was a pioneer of the so-called Catalan Nova Canço and a prominent voice against the repression and injustices of the Franco regime, which earned him arrests, fines and even exile in Mexico for a year.
In 1968 he resigned from performing at the Eurovision Song Contest in 1968 representing Spain for not being able to sing in Catalan the song “La, la, la”, with which Massiel, his replacement, won, doing so in Spanish.
The jury of the Princess of Asturias Award for the Arts 2024 praised the figure of the Catalan singer-songwriter as a “civic reference” whose work has been at the service of tolerance and shared values.
The minutes read by the president of the jury, Miguel Zugaza Miranda, director of the Museum of Fine Arts of Bilbao (northern Spain), highlights “the scope of an artistic career that transcends music and becomes a civic reference, adding to the lyrics of their songs the force of the collective anthem with universal will.”
For the jury, in Serrat’s work, “with deep Mediterranean roots”, the art of poetry and music are combined “at the service of tolerance, shared values, the richness of the diversity of languages and cultures, as well as a necessary desire for freedom“.
“A defender of dialogue in the face of tension, the work of Joan Manuel Serrat is an exponent of his inalienable vocation to build bridges between countries and generations,” concluded the jury, which this year had to choose between fifty candidates from 21 nationalities.
This composer, poet and also actor had been proposed on many occasions for the Princess of Asturias Award for the Arts, an award that last year went to the actress Meryl Streep and for which this year more than fifty candidates had been submitted.
Keep reading:
· Meryl Streep wins the Princess of Asturias 2023 award
· “It’s over”: Joan Manuel Serrat ends his goodbye tour
· Serrat’s visit to Joaquín Sabina in the hospital