Life and death of Gata Cattana, the rapper who continues to expand her legacy after dying at the age of 25

Four days before her death, Ana Isabel García Llorente (real name of Gata Cattana) entered the pharmacy in her town, Adamuz (Córdoba).

She was holding hands with her mother.

She weighed herself on the scale.

“Oh, how thin you are, daughter.

I'm going to make you a chickpea stew right now ”, she scolded him with that protective affection that only a mother can provide.

Ana had recently suffered a couple of gastroenteritis and as a result of them her body, already by nature without a gram of fat and stylized (she measured 1.74), she suffered the loss of a few kilos.

She answered, complicit: "Yes, mom, I promise you: I'll eat more."

It was the end of February 2017 and Ana had traveled from her residence in Madrid to Adamuz to present her first book of poems,

.

During that visit, the rapper and poet told her parents and her brother during a conversation where various topics were interwoven and without giving it too much importance: “Well, when I die I want to donate my organs.

So I can help someone else.

It would be a great satisfaction”.

It was, without her intending it, her last and generous will.

On March 2, 2017, she died suddenly at the age of 25 and the legend of Gata Cattana would begin, the erudite rapper, the feminist poet, the political scientist who fought against social injustices, the singer who reached emotions through rap.

Her courageous heart continues to beat in the body of another person, and her army expands and writes graffiti on the walls of the neighborhoods with her philosophy: "I do not recognize authority beyond my body."

Mural in honor of the artist at the Luna de la Sierra school in Adamuz, where she studied.PACO PUENTES

Mural at the Ntra. Sra. del Rosario School, in Montoro (Córdoba).

Image compiled by the artist's family.

A graffiti on a wall in Madrid with a phrase from the singer.

A street graffiti collected by the artist's family.

He remembers the artist in Granada, compiled by the artist's family.

Another in Denia (Alicante).

Compiled by the artist's family.

A street graffiti collected by the artist's family.

Adamuz is a municipality of about 4,500 inhabitants nestled in the foothills of Sierra Morena.

He lives mainly from olive trees (good oil) and from an emerging offer of rural tourism.

They separate you from Córdoba 30 minutes by car.

It is also the town where a girl with enigmatic eyes who earned the nickname Gata was born and lived until she was 18 years old.

There, with the wisdom of the field and with books as best friends, this restless girl forged her character.

Upon entering Adamuz, the visitor is greeted by two large murals on brick, about 20 meters long by 10 meters high each, dedicated to the rapper.

Images of her and slogans taken from her lyrics: "I only owe myself to my chimeras."

It is 1 pm on a Wednesday in February and the area breathes tranquility.

In one of the two playgrounds that delimit the murals, a grandfather plays with his two grandchildren.

Two elderly ladies cross the square presided over by the rapper's graffiti.

"Yes, she was a girl from the town who went to Madrid and died very young," they say without pausing when asked by the journalist if they know Gata Cattana.

A young woman, Isabel María, approaches and intervenes.

“My brother had a group with her before she got famous.

Ana was a very good person.

It is a pride for the town that was born here.

In the house of the Gata Cattana family in Adamuz, a memory of the singer emerges in every corner.

A photo of the communion day, his books, drawings made by fans, the two MIN independent music awards that he won posthumously… “When something as serious as what happened to us happens to you, you have two options: either you lock yourself up at home and you sink, or you pull forward and from the first moment you are claiming his work.

And my mother, who is as much a warrior as my sister, has opted for the second and has dragged my father and me down.

The speaker is Antonio, 27, Gata Cattana's only brother;

Meanwhile, her mother, Ana (57 years old), and her father, Andrés (65), look at him and nod while sitting on the central sofa in her beautiful house, with a small Cordovan patio.

A fire pit under a table warms the atmosphere.

They consider themselves a working-class family: Ana is an administrator and Andrés, already retired, worked for many years in the maintenance company that assisted the AVE.

Antonio studied Civil Engineering and was working outside of Córdoba but, "since that happened" (they will avoid using the word death or its derivatives during the long conversation), he has returned home to be with his parents and support him.

"The four of us spent a lot of time here and it was a tremendous feeling of calm and tranquility: on the sofa, doing nothing, with the TV on and talking about anything... She was always reading or writing."

“since that happened” (they will avoid using the word death or its derivatives during the long conversation), he has returned home, to be with his parents and support.

"The four of us spent a lot of time here and it was a tremendous feeling of calm and tranquility: on the sofa, doing nothing, with the TV on and talking about anything... She was always reading or writing."

“since that happened” (they will avoid using the word death or its derivatives during the long conversation), he has returned home, to be with his parents and support.

"The four of us spent a lot of time here and it was a tremendous feeling of calm and tranquility: on the sofa, doing nothing, with the TV on and talking about anything... She was always reading or writing."

The family of Ana Isabel García Llorente (Gata Cattana) in front of a mural of her daughter in Adamuz, Córdoba, on February 8.

From left to right: Andrés (the father), Antonio (the brother) and Ana (the mother).

PACO BRIDGES

Ana intervenes to detail her daughter's character: “She was a whirlwind, a super curious girl.

She wanted to learn everything.

Any answer was not enough for her: you had to give her a convincing argument ”.

When she was eight years old, the girl got fed up with receiving a Barbie for Reyes, and for the third year in a row, and she blurted out to her mother: “Mom, stop giving me dolls.

I am not interested".

She wanted pencils, sketchbooks, reading books that would fuel her imagination.

Ana remembers that the first time she sang her daughter in public she was about 10 years old and she chose

by Antonio Flores.

“I enrolled the two brothers in the town's music school.

And I, so as not to get bored, also signed up and learned to play the clarinet.

The day she sang

you could already see that she had something, ”she explains.

As a teenager, she began to perform at town festivals showing a good flamenco voice.

At home, she read both the adventure series

and Nietzsche, Simone de Beauvoir, or

by Pío Baroja.

In

documentary about her figure that opens on March 2 (directed by Juanma Sayalonga and David Sainz), says one of her teachers: “She was a girl ahead of her time.

She spoke with 15 years of gender violence when no other did ”.

He listened to his father's extensive record collection: Triana, Pink Floyd, Aretha Franklin... With adolescence he honed his tastes: Extremoduro, Ska-P, Mägo de Oz and a compilation of Spanish hip hop that had a great impact on him and which included Violators of the Verse, The Exception or Nach.

She was also part of a band, Aquí Pongo La Era, with a flamenco pop style, although she already rapped in some pieces.

The album of this group with friends from the town,

contains the first recordings of Gata Cattana.

Feminist mural in Ciudad Lineal (Madrid) in March 2021, which right-wing parties wanted to erase.

From left to right: Lyudmila Pavlichenko, Kanno Sugako, Gata Cattana, Frida Kahlo and Nina Simone.

alvaro garcia

At the age of 18, he went to Granada to study Political Science.

There he developed his social consciousness and came into contact with the

And he met Carlos Esteso (Madrid, 36 years old), who would be his DJ ever since.

“It was special because in the world of rap at that time, 2010, there were few girls and the boys had that hackneyed egotrip speech

She dealt with feminist, social, political, and philosophical issues”, points out the DJ.

Esteso and Cattana would no longer be separated: he proposing the music and she the lyrics.

Sayalonga, one of the directors of

He also coincided with her in Granada: “He talked to me about things that I didn't understand.

Political history, international trade… She was an atypical, unique rapper, a cultured person who liked to be locked in her world, but she also had her social life.

Cattana began to publish her first songs and present them in concerts.

Her staging was a declaration of intent: she did not need to embellish her songs with fuss as is usually done in the genre.

“She was not a pamphleteer.

She wrote with subtlety and elegance.

She was a great communicator, ”he points out.

Sayalonga.

And her image was shocking: without tattoos, she sometimes appeared with pigtails and student glasses;

she looked like she came onto the stage straight from the library.

“His message from him caught people: he insisted that the individual be awake, that he think for himself;

he spoke of respect and tolerance to those who deserve it.

And he has opened doors for a lot of people.

And the fact that she was a woman makes it more important, ”says David Sainz, co-director of

worked with

powerful materials and a thoughtful and scholarly discourse.

She quoted in her texts women thinkers of socialism and feminism such as Rosa Luxemburg, Clara Campoamor or Silvia Federici.

She named Socrates, Cicero, Prometheus, Icarus, Sisyphus, Eurycide... Classic myths and philosophies to explain today.

Also Don

to Neruda, to Pío Baroja, to Celaya… When appropriate, she did not give up getting cane.

A culturalist rap, protest, full of references, beautiful and furious, a work that assumes the inherited dilapidated world with the intention of fixing it.

As?

Trying to reach young people and cheating the system with erudition.

“Since Prometheus showed them the trick of fire, they subdued our ego from Athens to Istanbul.

/ You and how many like you against these two titans.

/ Run, go and tell him that we are not going to be so docile, ”he sings in his feminist hymn

Susana Pinilla Alba (29 years old, Córdoba) is surely the person who has studied Gata Cattana's work the most.

Currently, she is doing a PhD versed in feminist rap.

In addition, she teaches seminars on the work of the Cordovan rapper at the University of Wuppertal, in Germany, where she lives.

“Gata Cattana made social rap, a rap that is with the people, with the oppressed, and since there is no individual more subordinate than a woman, it is a rap that puts women at the center, sings from them and for them” , Pinilla points out.

And she adds: "She would situate her work as the heir to a looted autochthonous tradition, that of the intellectuals exiled or murdered by Francoism, of the feminists who fight against male domination both of conservatism and of the neoliberal progressivism of the new matches.

Images compiled by the family of tattoos in honor of the artist

In 2012, at the age of 21, Gata Cattana moved to Madrid with a Seneca scholarship for obtaining two first-year honors in Political Science in Granada.

In parallel, she enhances her musical facet.

She lived in a shared apartment in Aluche and later in Campamento, working-class neighborhoods in the capital.

Meanwhile, she continued to compose and perform with Carlos Esteso.

She edited songs that today are hymns for her followers:

They performed about 25 concerts, some of them in squatter houses.

"Other times they paid us with beers or had fights with the guy in the room because he didn't want to pay us," says Esteso.

She developed her poetic side in

some competitions in the style of cockfights in rap.

In one of these contests he presented

his mother's favorite poetry.

He begins like this: “The rich and the poor do not love in the same way.

/ The poor love with their hands.

/ The poor love in the flesh and with gluttony, in the worst pictures, in starving conditions and with everything against them”.

That concert of El Sol

During her stay in Madrid, she took the opportunity to study a Master's Degree in International Politics, which she completed her degree in Political Science, and worked as a telephone operator for a few months.

But her commitment was music.

A representative office of hers records her and she begins professional concerts: Santiago, Bilbao, Barcelona, ​​Jaén... In the summer of 2016 she suffered a powerful gastroenteritis and called her mother to move from Adamuz to Madrid to take care of her. she.

In December of that same year, she traveled to Mexico with her boyfriend, a professional in the audiovisual world.

There she suffered another intestinal indigestion.

In January 2017, she performed at the El Sol theater in Madrid. Tickets were sold out (about 400 people) and many people were left outside, frustrated, without a ticket.

“There I had the feeling of being at the beginning of something great.

The dedication of the people was very passionate and she was with many tables, "says Sayalonga, present at that concert.

The feeling was that she was about to explode.

“We already knew that we had done it.

We knew it.

Advertising offers did not stop arriving: Reebook, Lacoste…”, points out Esteso.

Although she basically interpreted rap with a marked Andalusian accent, her musical palette was wide: at home she listened to Remedios Amaya, Estrella Morente, Niño de Elche, Amy Winehouse, Nina Simone, the most modern Princess Nokia...

On February 24, 2017, he traveled to Adamuz, his town, to present his book of poems.

On the 25th, Saturday, the Carnival was celebrated there.

"He had a great time: he was singing flamenco with the comparsas," says his brother.

That same day, in addition to his comment about organ donation, he told his mother: “I wouldn't mind dying young;

so people later remember what you have done”.

The mother became angry and replied: "You have to ask God to live until you are 100 years old with a decrepit body from having used it and having enjoyed it."

On Monday the 27th he returned to Madrid.

The 28th would be her last day.

It was Andalusia Day and she called her mother to tell her that she was listening to Rocío Jurado's interpretation of the Andalusian anthem.

Carlos Esteso saw her that morning: “We were making music the day before and I told her that I invited her to eat.

But she said that she had a date with someone and then she went to the gym ”.

As part of her goal to gain weight, she was on a protein diet and she had joined a gym to strengthen her muscles.

Before starting the session in the gym, she began to feel bad.

She was short of breath, she was choking.

Someone called the health services.

Mobile UVI, flashing lights, ambulance sounds...

They transferred her to the Gregorio Marañón hospital in the capital.

Her parents left Adamuz for Madrid.

Antonio, her brother, wrote a message to his sister: "Sister, get well, please."

She never read it.

Friends and musicians passed through the hospital, including Rosalía and C. Tangana, at that time a couple.

The news of her death was delayed by the efforts of the donation.

The parents wanted her daughter's wish to be fulfilled.

The family released the death and the cause on March 2: a

anaphylactic, a severe allergy that causes failure of vital organs.

“Ana and her brother Antonio hers have been asthmatics all their lives.

She started when she was a year and a half.

When she was older, she always wore the Ventolín.

She also had food allergies, allergies that came and went.

She would eat tomato and it would cause rashes, and another day she would take it and nothing would happen.

She the fish the same.

She loved her hake croquettes, the ones at the Chaparro bar, in town.

She ate them with no problem, but one day she got sick, ”explains her mother.

The family believes that the

anaphylactic caused by some kind of fish.

Since she was so intemperate with her stomach, the singer had taken some tests days before she was supposed to pick up on March 10, a week after she died.

The family did not want to know the results.

"It didn't matter anymore," they say.

The artist has a tombstone in the Adamuz cemetery, where visitors deposit letters, flowers, tributes...

Wild theories about his death

The singer's father, Andrés (with the same eyes as his daughter), is convinced that if "what happened" had not happened, his daughter's future would go beyond music: "She assumed

.

She would say: 'she dedicated me to music until I was 35 years old and then I concentrated on writing'.

Today she would be 31 years old.

Since that March 2, 2017, her legacy has been spread by a large army of followers (in the song

she already appealed to group support: “Ten thousand well-used listeners are an army, they are an army”), who see in her an inspiration .

Seven months after her disappearance, what is her first long album,

with 13 themes.

Wild theories were also spread about the cause of his death.

Her mother notes one of hers: "It was said about her until they had conspired against her and that they had poisoned her...".

In the documentary, Mala Rodríguez points out: "She has left a seed and who knows how much she will give of herself."

In addition to the family, one of the victims is her DJ, Carlos Esteso: “I fell into a depression that still drags me.

Now I'm in the shit: Gata Cattana is dead, but she lives;

and I am alive, but dead.

My life was precious and now it's shit.

Like when you wake up from a good dream.

That seed that Mala Rodríguez talks about expands every March 8, with banners where her feminist phrases are collected;

or on the walls of the neighborhoods;

or in the documentary

or in

from politicians like Íñigo Errejón;

or with days of poetry and music with her name in different cities;

or in political spaces such as the Madrid Assembly, where Isa Serra rebutted Díaz Ayuso with quotes from the singer (“we want coffee for everyone, who have been scrubbing cups for many centuries”);

or in tributes on the social media accounts of her followers.

Always with her phrases, emphatic: "I invoke you daughters of Eva looking for a light."

Gata Cattana used to phone her mother every day at around seven in the evening.

To chat about how she had fared her day.

Still today, six years after her death, when the phone rings around that time, her mother's heart skips a beat.