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The only way I can retire is if I lose my voice or my hair falls out.

Those are the two things you can't rock without.

", explains Miguel Ríos (Granada, 1944) between laughs. In 2011 he announced his retirement, but it lasted a sigh. He has just announced a tour to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Rock&Ríos

when you stand in front of him, you observe him and listen to him, you have to review the accounts three times to believe that he is cute in the 80s. "I am going straight to old age, do not be fooled," he laughs.

Were you so bored at home?

When you retire late, it's terrible because, suddenly, you realize that you are wasting opportunities, especially when you have a vocational trade.

I really tried to quit, but they called me from

and everything was messed up.

It was the call from Víctor [Manuel] that convinced me.

And then things were linked and here we continue.

It has been a concatenation of events.

So I can't withdraw no matter how much I want.

Also, now that you can contribute even while retired, we can do our little things. In this country we are very ashamed to say that we work to earn money.

Less the banks... I continue because I am passionate about my job, but since I do it I want to earn money, obviously.

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Miguel Bosé: "I got out of the system and I am preparing to be self-sufficient: I am a master baker"

• Writing: IÑAKO DÍAZ-GUERRA Madrid

Miguel Bosé: "I got out of the system and I am preparing to be self-sufficient: I am a master baker"

What is an almost 80 year old rocker?

It is the satisfaction of making music that you still believe in, that still moves you.

I remember so vividly when I took out Elvis's 'Hound Dog' in the record store in Granada... So, there were 10 LPs in a box from the company and when I opened it, a stink of tar came out, which already made you a little high.

See the record, take it out of the case, put it on and hear that: "

...". Not knowing what it was or what it was saying, but feeling that it was for you, that it was talking to you. That's the same feeling that I still have now when I listen to music. Those three chords still produce me, already not the stupor of that day, but an immense joy. It is the engine that moves me. I am a militant of a music that, first, revolutionized the planet and, later, has evolved in a series of miscegenations that allow you, without lose the rock essence, play with a symphony orchestra. When I heard

played by the symphony was awesome, man.

Life is giving me the chance to do this kind of thing, like making the record 40 years later, calling 19 guys who are going to sing with you and who assume my songs as their own.

That was a very important moment in my life because I thought that

represented Spanish rock.

They have been killing rock for 25 years and it is shown that the news of his death is exaggerated.

Exact.

As an anecdote, the first time I went to record, in the last week of November 1961, the artistic director, Ricardo Fernández de la Torre, told me when listening to the songs: "But, Miguelito, what are you doing? If rock has died".

And I: "But, Ricardo, how do you tell me that? I haven't heard."

"Now the twist has been born and the king is dead, the king is on."

In 1961 rock had already been destroyed, but the phrase made a fortune: rock is dead.

Well here you go.

Of course, it is that rock has absolutely invaded hip-hop, reggaeton, everything.

The essence by which these styles have incarnation, have weight, is the essence of rock, what is being told today has already been told,

with another formula, rock: the framework message that moves all that music is the same dissatisfaction that moved Led Zeppelin or Zappa, the dissatisfaction of being in a world in which you should have importance as a human being and as a collective and not the have.

That sucks a lot and it's very good fuel for the songs.

40 years ago, the

was a symbol in a country that came out of darkness.

Is this the Spain you dreamed of or has it been disappointing?

Man, of course it has been disappointing because every epiphany has an epilogue and the epilogue has not been as brilliant as the approach.

You have perfectly explained the mental place where that happened.

When we did

, Spain was ready to hit the streets.

The saying "in the right place at the right time" caught us and we were lucky that it became a collective phenomenon of emotional education.

It caught us squarely and was one of the engines that made people feel that things were changing.

It would have been really different without that environmental emotional charge that there was, the entrance of the

, the

It was a kind of agitated premonition that something was going to happen here, that everything was going to change.

That happened at a certain time and now, obviously, we do not have it, we live on the obverse of that effervescent and happy Spain.

The problem is that what was built was imperfect and the magical halo it had is broken when you have to do an industrial reconversion and you have to ask hundreds of thousands of people to sacrifice themselves.

Reality is always there to fuck up your dream.

Have we broken Spain?

Yes, but we have also broken it by saying so much.

If you, due to the imperative of reality and expediency, constantly bring out the crutch "this is breaking", in the end it breaks.

And, apart from that, not only Spain is breaking, the planet is breaking.

This is a planetary question, a dystopian crossroads.

That of 1982 was a utopian crossroads and this one is dystopian: will humanity of 8,000 million people be able to survive the reality that less than 1% of them dominates the rest, in wealth and opportunities?

Can humanity not rebel against this brutal inequality by the most civilized means at hand, which is politics?

Therein lies the dilemma.

Here now, being an election year, the throwing weapon is absolutely unbearable, that is clear, but it is a global problem with climate change that, precisely because it favors wealth, is likely to mean that not even the richest in the cemetery can enjoy it.

You have said that, with VOX, Francoism has returned.

Of course he's back.

Besides, I did not live the Republic,

but I have read a lot about it and there are a series of signs from the past that return as political behavior and it scares you, of course.

You're spinning and you say: "Damn, this was exactly what was happening in the Republican Courts when the atmosphere began to be unbearable."

The only consolation is that we are in Europe and what happened in 1936 cannot happen... even if they want to.

Do you think they want?

Of course, but these people the most they can do today is make you a Trump.

Which is not little, but it is not a war or a dictatorship.

What do we have left?

Fight more to dismantle this, but I am going for the biggest: if the state of things continues like this, there will be no possibility that the right wing will win because they are going to eat the goose that lays the golden eggs.

If this brutal inequality continues to expand, they will not have people who buy from them.

The polls say otherwise... Yeah, yeah.

That anything can happen here and that we will have it deserved, it is clear (laughs).

We are the host.

But before that you have to be prepared and I really believe that, despite the fact that everything is terrifying to see due to the state of stridency in which we live, you have to extrapolate and say: "Can we continue fighting so that public health is better? Because the public school is better? Because the perks that we all pay for our taxes do not go practically only to concerted health and education? Can we fight this?"

At least we can and should say so.

It is probable that we will not achieve it, but if there were a change of government, it would have to continue saying,

Just as it is said to the current one that some of the facts that are causing tension in society originate from the promulgators of those laws to improve society that have failed.

Well, they will have to improve.

Are you referring to the law of 'only yes is yes'? Of course and they will have to rectify, there will have to be politics, nothing happens.

Politics is very important and has the essential function of improving the lives of human beings.

If that was the intention, and it was good, but something is wrong, it must be fixed. Are you disenchanted with the current left? I am not disenchanted in a general way, I am with some problems that the left is getting into in an absolutely clumsy way .

In the end, I don't think there is anything different today than what the left has always had: an internal fight that led to all the disasters that it has led to,

to the lack of unity and to put the private interests of each faction above the common good of the left.

But despite the errors, which are evident, the ideological background of the left is the one that represents me.

It is clear that I will democratically assume a change in trend and if the right wins I will live perfectly, I will maintain my ideas and I will admit that there are more people who have wanted that type of government, but I will be sorry because the left has done shocking things in this legislature, but frightening, having touched a pandemic and a war.

It's Murphy's Law squared, damn it, and even so things have moved: the minimum wage, the Iberian exception... We are much more considered in Europe than ever before.

So I can't be disappointed.

I'm too old to change.

You know what they say that if you weren't a communist at 20, you didn't have a heart and if you are at 60, you're an asshole.

Well, I'm an asshole.

A great honor.

Why did you sign in favor of the pardon of José Antonio Griñán? For humanitarian reasons.

First of all, clarify that he made a lollipop and you have to pay for the lollipops, but a guy who has cancer, who has 75 tacos and hasn't taken a penny, are you going to put him in jail?

I know Griñán very little, I have been with him twice: when they made me a favorite son of Andalusia and when they made Saramago an adoptive son.

He touched me at the table with him and I thought he was a great man, with some great cultural interests, but that's not what led me to sign the letter: I signed for humanism.

I see the political vendettas in that and those vendettas speak ill of the human being.

You have to have a point of mercy with the other.

I signed for that and I hope the man heals and doesn't go to prison.

When you do tours like this, reminiscing about what happened 40 years ago, do you get nostalgic? For a long time I fled from nostalgia like the plague because it made me not enjoy the present.

Now, nostalgia already enters as a component of late age, of the first senescence in which I find myself (laughs), but note that it is not because of the music thing but because of things from childhood.

Especially when I go to Granada and there is a kind of immersion in the brutal past.

And look how curious, the same thing happens to me with the roads.

I have seen the evolution of all the roads in this country:

going in a little lane 20 cars behind a truck at 2 per hour, I remember each of the Despeñaperros curves, I have them drawn in my mind.

Now I step over and I no longer value that great public work.

I'm nostalgic with that kind of thing, but not in the field of my work.

Do you know what's up?

Since I decided to come back, what I spend the most time on is taking care of myself: pampering my throat, doing exercises every day, preparing the repertoire very well... I don't want to make a fool of myself for failing.

In other words, you are a monastic athlete. Exactly.

I had to stop all the excesses, but by medical prescription, not for pleasure.

That has been very good for me too.

I take care of myself because I have no more things to do.

I never go out at night anymore because my body doesn't allow it, dinners are abolished because a copious dinner means not sleeping...

There is a chain of cause-effect that makes you have to adopt, however rocker you are, the behaviors that age dictates.

Age is relentless.

I tell you one thing.

Look at Mick Jagger, he's the athlete of the night.

It is a profession and the profession must be paid and I am very happy, but that also forces me to give the level.

My life is active because there are some guys who started spending money on my records and tickets a long time ago, I understand that this is patronage, and I have to respect them more than anything.

I'm the anti Dylan.

There, between Van Morrison and Fary, I am.

It is a profession and the profession must be paid and I am very happy, but that also forces me to give the level.

My life is active because there are some guys who started spending money on my records and tickets a long time ago, I understand that this is patronage, and I have to respect them more than anything.

I'm the anti Dylan.

There, between Van Morrison and Fary, I am.

It is a profession and the profession must be paid and I am very happy, but that also forces me to give the level.

My life is active because there are some guys who started spending money on my records and tickets a long time ago, I understand that this is patronage, and I have to respect them more than anything.

I'm the anti Dylan.

There, between Van Morrison and Fary, I am.

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