Rigoberta Bandini: "When I was little I wanted to be a boy, it seemed more fun to me"

• Benidorm Fest "My song is all the women of Spain, united by a message of hope"

• Summer 'Sold out' "We are all bitches, no matter what sexual identity... Perra is a lifestyle"

Before being Rigoberta Bandini, before

and Spain chanting

Paula Ribó (Barcelona, ​​1990) published

, a short self-fiction in which the images, lyrics and archetypes that later he would turn into

or

.

This small volume-jewel written in 2018 and until now unfindable returns to bookstores with the Penguin Random House reissue.

is a trip to Stockholm in an atmosphere of solitude, like a Hopper hotel painting or Scarlett Johansson's wandering around Tokyo in

In this confessional prequel to Rigoberta Bandini there are verses that sound like future songs, hangover scenes in which she promises never to drink again, a flight with the feel of a Sorrentino movie, a Jacuzzi under the snow, the memory of her marbles, a dream -Interlude on Divine Solitude (or a nod to LSD)...

In the prologue you write that before you had one name and now two.

How do you live being Paula and Rigoberta?

Almost everything is positive.

I get much more love and

.

But sometimes the external demand is very demanding and I would like to be able to turn off some button.

With these two names I can have things that I would not have imagined, a creative freedom and resources that is an incredible privilege and that as an artist I had never known.

I come from the world of theater which is quite precarious.

Getting a white chair was... ugh, red numbers all the time

You can create a breast five meters in diameter and stay that wide, yes. Did the Benidorm Fest leave you with a bittersweet taste?

Was the result a disappointment? Not really.

The moment we didn't win there was something in me that was very happy.

I understood that it made perfect sense to be there to reach an audience that I would never have reached, but that this was not my path anyway.

It's just that sometimes I'm very mystical, believing that everything that has to be, is, and what didn't have to be, isn't.

had received so much support and love that this victory stays with me forever.

Going to Eurovision would be super fun, but I prefer that my song has become part of society. A year ago you were an

and now all of Spain knows you.

Does it give you vertigo?

Of course.

Every day they stop me on the street, but it is very wearable.

It is rare and very new.

I notice that after this boom I need to do things with my nucleus, my friends, my family... I need to connect with myself through my people, return to my center because it is very easy for energy to disperse with so much noise around.

My only obligation right now is to put on my umbrella so that all that external noise doesn't take away the most precious thing: writing about what I really want. Rereading the book now, you realize that it's always the same threads that hurt you.

Which?

There are problems with motherhood that have disappeared because it makes you land from somewhere else.

But there are others that are still there: freedom, spirit, melancholy... Above all, my insatiable search for freedom,

I don't know what the hell you mean [laughs].

This thing of being in one place and starting to feel comfortable having to look for another... I read the book and I wonder 'wow, will I always be the same?'

But at the same time it makes me excited because so many things have happened to me in such a short time... Connecting with words prior to this brutal change seems like a compliment to myself and gives me security.

I tell myself: 'Don't worry, you're the same, only things around you have changed'.

is born from a crisis, from a breakup of a couple.

You cry a lot in the book... I cry a lot in general.

Crying is fine, I recommend it.

The book is a bit like the

literally [lonely planet], from Stockholm.

A guide that in an "attack of savagery" you end up throwing into the river... Oh, yes, of course.

This part always comes up: the dog... The dog that at 18 years old threw her bag into the sea on a summer night?

Yes, I have done many things and very funny in this obsessive search to feel free, to feel that I still have my wild part.

What I fear most is superficiality and doing things just because, living on a kind of autopilot.

I'm so heavy with connecting and connecting... I don't want to do what I would touch, not to innovate but because at each moment we are one person.

You make a paella and people always want paellas.

After Ay mama I'm going to release a super different song, not because I want to annoy anyone.

The other day they told me: 'But if you liked this,

why don't you give them more?'

I want to be true to myself.

Now I'm sick of this color.

I need something else, although I know it won't work the same.

And I love that.

I can't always be a machine of... I don't know. You say that on Saturday mornings you like to talk about God.

What relationship do you have with God, with the spiritual?

I always say that I believe in everything: in a universal artery that unites us and in a lot of connections that we have of which we are not aware because they are asleep.

When you enter spirituality a little you begin to feel those connections, to understand that you belong to something bigger.

It helps me to write, to give concerts.

For me it is still a ritual of collective catharsis, a union.

It has a lot to do with God and spirituality.

Music doesn't just sound, it's much more powerful, it penetrates you.

In a letter that Paula writes to herself, you ask yourself: 'What the hell does it mean to be a woman?' I doubt if we have invented the genre.

Obviously, there are things that we do not share, an anatomy that conditions us.

We bleed once a month and that makes us more vulnerable, of course.

But not all women bleed once a month to begin with.

It is a subject that obsesses me.

When she was very little she said that she wanted to be a boy: it seemed more fun to me.

Then I became very feminized. At 12, when "two breasts appeared on my torso without asking permission"?

I became hypersexualized very soon, I had complexes and I judged myself a lot, my body.

I have oscillated between masculinity and femininity according to what society has needed, but I wonder what is true of me in all this.

What is it to be a woman? What they told me it had to be?

What am I now?

What will I be?

What I do know is that right now being a woman is more comfortable than ever, at this vital moment.

The more years go by, the more comfortable I feel because I am unlearning and finding my new ways of being a woman.

I feel comfortable in a femininity tailored to me. Your prologue is addressed to a

The more years go by, the more comfortable I feel because I am unlearning and finding my new ways of being a woman.

I feel comfortable in a femininity tailored to me. Your prologue is addressed to a

The more years go by, the more comfortable I feel because I am unlearning and finding my new ways of being a woman.

I feel comfortable in a femininity tailored to me. Your prologue is addressed to a

and ends with a postscript to the outraged reader.

There is always that feminist vindication...Speaking in feminine makes me feel better, using generic words like 'Do you all come?'

There is something conceptual about the power of language.

A few years ago, when I heard someone speak in feminine, it seemed ridiculous to me, I thought 'What a crazy woman, accept the world, it's said like that'.

But over the years I feel more comfortable with the feminine, it is something that relieves me.

Saying dear reader hurt my sternum: by reader I mean everyone.

But, you will see, they will say that it is a book written for women... That is why I clarified it with a postscript: gentlemen, you are also people.

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