The last concert that Miguel attended was the one that in 1984 was held in the Madrid sports palace where the socialist mayor Tierno Galván gave way to the first unloading of rock, before thousands of young people put to cook in the stands of cement, pronounced that memorable phrase: "And whoever is not high, let him be high",
and finished it off with the cry of
"To the parrot".
Getting high simply meant sticking a spike into your veins or a line of farlopa up your nose or a weed joint up your trunk.
On the other hand,
the parrot
was a Vallecano expression of being the one that jumps and remaining vigilant to catch a slice.
It was the time when heroin wreaked havoc.
Every night in the bars of the Movida a dazzled junkie appeared with his head in the toilet bowl, dead from an overdose.
Faced with such an imposture by that old professor with the abbatial face and soft neck, Miguel said goodbye to all that and never attended any concert subsidized from above, no matter who the politician was on top.
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The art of raising the glass to the lips
Tierno Galván was willing to do anything to appear modern and ancient at the same time, an explosive mix that provided him with many electoral gains.
Like an outdated gentleman, he published some sides in which he parodied an imitation of eighteenth-century literature, Moratín style.
But he could also dance a slow fox tied to the stunning body of the black Flor in a traditional vervain or lean out with an angry look at the bare breasts of the actress Susana Estrada to warn her: "Don't catch a cold, miss."
Miguel attended his funeral in January 1986, a social event in which a million people from Madrid participated from the sidewalks watching his carriage pulled by Federica by three horse collars covered with black crape.
Miguel had reached political consciousness through the concerts that were given in Madrid as battering rams to assault the bastion of the dictatorship.
Freedom came to this country with the first electric guitars.
At the end of each concert it was obligatory to light a lighter or a match to accompany the last song.
When the case came Miguel did it too.
That flame was the one that lit the blind alley of history, but feeling squeezed by a multitude of bodies those nights when the fireflies flickered under the music downloads was then a way of being, of being, of flirting, of shouting, to flee.
Now Miguel, with a drink in hand, remembers that the day the Beatles arrived in Madrid in 1965 he went to welcome them at Barajas and participated in the caravan of cars that accompanied them honking their horns to the Fénix hotel where they stayed.
At that moment, surrounded by teenagers, he realized that he was too old for this party.
In 1976, the Raimon concert took place in the Real Madrid pavilion, with the opposition just out of the sewer and jail, sitting in line zero, with Marcelino Camacho in front.
Miguel remembers that the police surrounding the pavilion were about to charge into the premises to fumigate them all.
And under that scent of tear gas came the Transition and in January 1981 in that same place there was a wild discharge from the Australian group AC/DC,
when the southern mobs equipped with hard leather jackets and shards of glass and safety pins pierced through the flesh of the cheeks tore down all the fences.
It was another kind of transition.
That concert caught Miguel ready to hold on to the last handle of freedom, to the wings of the last archangel to fly over that space.
And that's when, in July 1982, the Rolling Stones arrived at the Metropolitan Stadium one afternoon of obscene heat, full of electric humidity that ended in a storm in which the thunder emulated the discharges emanating from the loudspeakers or vice versa.
In the stands there were already UCD ministers with their offspring, some of them with their hair stuck together, brand dresses.
That concert caught Miguel ready to hold on to the last handle of freedom, to the wings of the last archangel to fly over that space.
And that's when, in July 1982, the Rolling Stones arrived at the Metropolitan Stadium one afternoon of obscene heat, full of electric humidity that ended in a storm in which the thunder emulated the discharges emanating from the loudspeakers or vice versa.
In the stands there were already UCD ministers with their offspring, some of them with their hair stuck together, brand dresses.
That concert caught Miguel ready to hold on to the last handle of freedom, to the wings of the last archangel to fly over that space.
And that's when, in July 1982, the Rolling Stones arrived at the Metropolitan Stadium one afternoon of obscene heat, full of electric humidity that ended in a storm in which the thunder emulated the discharges emanating from the loudspeakers or vice versa.
In the stands there were already UCD ministers with their offspring, some of them with their hair stuck together, brand dresses.
full of electric humidity that ended in a storm in which the thunder emulated the discharges emanating from the baffles or vice versa.
In the stands there were already UCD ministers with their offspring, some of them with their hair stuck together, brand dresses.
full of electric humidity that ended in a storm in which the thunder emulated the discharges emanating from the baffles or vice versa.
In the stands there were already UCD ministers with their offspring, some of them with their hair stuck together, brand dresses.
In Madrid the hangover from the Tejero coup still reigned although there were remains of a happy acracia.
The Socialists were about to arrive.
Tierno Galván had preceded them in the mayor's office.
He was a guy who said good morning to the police over the radio, quoting Schopenhauer, but instead of John Lennon he said John Lennox and yet at home water came out of the taps.
Miguel, now with a drink in his hand, remembers those times when freedom was illuminated by the flame of a lighter.
Today that flame has been supplanted by the light of the mobiles that are turned on at the end of each concert to continue illuminating the blind alley of history.
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