Battle rock, The Clash’s fifth album began with a song called Know your rights (Know your rights). Being politically literate is not within everyone’s reach, but who doesn’t have three minutes and forty seconds to listen to a song.
The lyrics say that, more than a song, what they do is a public service. And that there are three fundamental rights that we need to know: the right not to be murdered (because “murder is a crime unless it is committed by an aristocrat or a police officer”), the right to ‘to have money to buy food and the right to have money to buy food. right to freedom of expression. It’s been 42 years since Joe Strummer and Mick Jones wrote this song, but it’s still relevant today.
In a musical panorama where the dominant discourse is sexual, romantic, casual or spiritual, there is not much room in 2024 for combat rock. On the other hand, the living conditions of the working class in Spain are complicated: low wages, inaccessible housing, uncertain retirement, brutal competitiveness, expulsion from cities. But there are people who live in the present, like Biznaga.
This Madrid group, with ten years of career and four albums behind them, presents its fifth album this Friday, October 4: NOW! Neither before nor after, now.
“If you want to talk about today’s society, you have to talk about housing, work, anxiety, streets and neighborhoods,” they say in this interview that Susana Monteagudo did with them for our newspaper. “There is no more bread, there are no more roses!” » they shout, for those who have not heard. The Biznaga exhort us, with political imagination, to “occupy the present moment”, as the title of one of their new songs.
Well, we would be there. Before heading out, finish checking this week’s newsletter, as it contains our recommendations. Javier Zurro offers three films, Laura García Higueras, three projects; and I bring you three books that are new in bookstores, as well as three articles that we published this week and I would not want you to neglect them.
Three recommended articles
- Manuel Vilas has published a few fictionalized memoirs and therefore titled, modestly, The best book in the world. Clara Nuño spoke to him and the first thing that caught his attention was how well dressed he is. And also, he likes to be invited. It’s all in the book.
- We are full of prejudices about the Middle Ages (we have already talked about it here), but also in matters of sexuality. José María Sadia spoke with Isabel Mellén, who sheds new light on representations of vulvas, exuberant phalluses and orgies in medieval art.
- Najwa Nimri stars The red virgin, Paula Ortiz’s film about the parricide of Aurora Rodríguez against her daughter Hildegart. We invited her to the elDiario editorial office to chat with Javier Zurro. The story behind “a something like Nosferatuvampiric,” he tells us.
Three recommended books
- Douglas Couplandthe author of Generation publishes a work of his purest, most distilled and most encapsulated style: frenzy (Alliance). A collection of quick and precise micro-stories. In bookstores from October 3.
- Abel Debritto He is one of the great translators and experts in Charles Bukowski. He is also the author of Bukowski. King of the underground (Point of view), a critical study of this writer who typed without restraint and clung to a bottle. To do this, Debritto conducted extensive research into the publications that welcomed and influenced him. In bookstores from October 9.
- Matias Candeira brings us a set of sinister, tragi-comic and fantastical stories under the title A god with an empty stomach (Raft). This Madrid-based author, columnist and teacher of creative writing, tells here twelve stories that produce strangeness, as it should. Already in bookstores.
Three recommended films, by Javier Zurro
- The sparks: How nice to see how Pilar Palomero grows as a filmmaker with each passing film. With The sparks signs his best film adapt a story by Eider Rodrígez adapted to his terrain and his sensitivity. A delicate and elegant look at death, with two enormous performances (those of Patricia López Arnaiz, winner in San Sebastian, and Antonio de la Torre) and some directly memorable scenes.
- Saturn: Attention to Daniel Tornero, who with this documentary demonstrates a personal perspective capable of tackling thorny subjects from stimulating places. Here, he takes a terrifying personal event – his grandfather was arrested for pedophilia – to reflect on fatherhood and inherited toxic masculinity. Always fleeing morbidity and constructing powerful and personal images.
- Will and Harper: We know Will Ferrell for his slightly silly comedies, but now we will also see his softer side in this documentary in which he goes on a trip to the United States with his lifelong friend Harper, who during the pandemic decided to do the transition and be the woman he always dreamed of. A luminous and didactic look at the current transphobic discourse.
Three projects for the weekend, by Laura García Higueras
- Damn ladies. Ana Karenina, Madame Bovary and La Regenta were three heroines, but with tragic stories and heartbreaking endings due to their gender. The playwright Chema Cardeña brought them together in this work in which desire, social acceptance, love and indirect violence occur while the three protagonists speak to assert that, if they had been men, their literary life would have been different. He is represented in the Russafa Room from Valencia.
- The fire. Elena del Rivero will carry out this Saturday La Quema, a cultural action in which she will burn part of her paintings from the 70s and 80s, at At Casa do Pozo (Ourense). This grew out of the 20 years in which he completed the Dust Archiveswhich consisted of transforming an external and devastating act, such as the September 11 attacks, during which his New York studio was practically destroyed, into a new work.
- See you later, Mari Carmen Tour. It seems that “taking a break” is in fashion this year. In addition to Old MorlaLa Pegatina has decided until 2025 but, before that, they will do one last concert at the WiZink Center this Saturday. Ideal for doing good dances and jumps.
Librotea’s recommendations
And we end with other reading suggestions. Librotea offers books that are the best company for taking a plane and crossing the Atlantic:
