Madrid (EFE).- Joaquín Sabina returns this Thursday to the Spanish stages with a tour that he has baptized with humor, attending to the omens of those who three years ago saw him suffer a spectacular fall in the middle of a concert that seemed to seal the end of his live career , “Against all odds”.
His first match against his compatriots will be at the Gran Canaria Arena in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria after a series of previous appointments on the other side of the Atlantic, where the chronicles state that the artist, at 74, did not disappoint his followers when addressing a two-hour repertoire with all his classics.
Three years, a hospital admission and a pandemic that took away the desire for almost everything have passed since Sabina (Úbeda, Jaén, 1949) stood at the Wizink Center in Madrid with her friend and partner Joan Manuel Serrat on her previous tour joint, “There are not two without three.”
Fall on the day he turned 71
It was February 12, 2020, the day he turned 71, when, after losing his footing on the edge of the stage due to a cable and the light of a spotlight, he fell into the pit from almost two meters high, resulting in several trauma, a hospital admission to the ICU and an operation to remove a small clot.
It was the last episode of his already famous “iron ill health”, which was added a few days later to the declaration of a pandemic by covid-19 and the confinement measures, which in his case had to be followed with greater rigor and duration to ensure your recovery.
“What I like the most are gatherings smoking, drinking and laughing with friends and I thought that this was not going to be possible anymore, which made me very sad and left me with little desire to write”, he confessed about those days in the presentation from the biographical documentary filmed by his friend Fernando León de Aranoa, “Sentiendo lo mucho”.
Already then he commented that it was this project that once again motivated him to make new music, such as the homonymous song that he signed with Leiva, awarded a Goya for the best song and touchstone of the material that will compose his next album, still without a release date. exit after knocking down the initial idea of launching it last Christmas.
“I don’t like to go on tour without new songs, but this time we decided to take things easy,” Sabina argued after promising that the successor to “I deny everything” (2016) will see the light of day this year.
The departure of Pancho Varona
Another circumstance made this upcoming tour news: the departure of the band by decision of the artist Pancho Varona himself after a 40-year relationship in which they co-wrote a hundred songs, in addition to being a musician and producer by his side.
In an article by the musical chronicler Juan Puchades for the magazine “Efe Eme” that Sabina’s team approved of questions from EFE, the break was coming, partly because the relationship had deteriorated over the years and was limited “strictly to tours.”
What broke the camel’s back was, according to the text, a conflict between Varona and the rest of the band that accompanies Sabina. All together they had formed La Noche Sabinera, a show to perform on their own the repertoire of the Spanish singer-songwriter with his approval when he took vacations from the stage.
Puchades recounts keys to the malaise that was brewing between them: Varona replaced the previous manager with an inexperienced friend and had other projects in parallel “that marked the agenda of the main band.”
In 2021 he left this formation and founded a new project that he announced as “the authentic Sabinera tour”. The rest of the group, renamed Benditos Malditos, went ahead with their own “shows”, such as a media performance in April 2022 in which Sabina himself accompanied them by surprise, a significant display of positioning.
Sabina returns to Spain with 31 stops
Thus, Sabina returns to Spain with 31 stops throughout a good part of the country, the most immediate at the Santa Cruz de Tenerife fairgrounds on April 22 and in her hometown of Úbeda on the 29th.
In May he will perform in Malaga (Palacio de Deportes Martín Carpena, days 5 and 6), the Alicante bullring (days 10 and 12) and Madrid (Wizink Center, 23 and 25). In June it will pass through A Coruña (Coliseum, 2 and 4), Palma de Mallorca (Trui Son Fusteret, 10), Valencia bullring (13 and 15), Bilbao (BEC!, 23 and 25) and the arena of Murcia (29).
There it will repeat on July 1, on the 5th of that month it will travel to the Cantabrian town of Torrelavega (El Malecón Stadium) and in September it will reactivate the agenda with appointments at La Maestranza in Seville (days 1 and 2), in the bullring of Granada (8 and 10), in Pamplona (Navarra Arena, 15 and 17) and Barcelona (Palau Sant Jordi, 27 and 29).
After passing through the Príncipe Felipe de Zaragoza Pavilion on October 6 and 8, he will return to America to offer a new batch of shows, with a final scheduled again at the Wizink Center in Madrid on December 18 and 20.
In all of them, they will fly over the words of the author of “Closed due to demolition” when asked if it could be the last opportunity to see it: “If it is not the last, it will be the penultimate, but I certainly do not intend to announce anything. What I’m going to do is enjoy.”