The mystery of Manuel Carrasco: how to get out of a fishing village and end up being a singer who fills up stadiums

It is likely that nothing you think you know about Manuel Carrasco (Isla Cristina, 41 years old), if you do not know his career, have not gone to any of his concerts or listened to any of his latest albums (he has just released his ninth), be true.

For example: it is possible that he is completely unaware that he is the Spanish singer with record attendance at a live music event since 74,345 people came to see him in the summer at a concert he gave in Seville;

It is plausible that he has no idea that many of the songs are sung with the most emotion by the thousands of fans who go to see him religiously at his recitals, even though he has a soft flamenco background (what some call flamenco, a name he hates). , are more like epic Coldplay anthems than bulerías, and you may not know that he has sold a million records.

This was what happened, for example, to the presenter and comedian David Broncano, who, after seeing a poster announcing a performance by the artist at the Wanda Metropolitano in Madrid, said on the radio: “What a freak.

How is it going to fill that if there are 60,000 people.

It will fill the baths.”

He had to eat his words: this year Carrasco visited him in

and as an elegant zasca gave him the DVD of his performance in the stadium that, of course, filled.

It is probable, however, that you also inevitably associate Carrasco with

, the television program that was considered one of the few platforms where he, a boy who was the son of a fisherman and an all-rounder woman, could try a career in music, raised together with four other brothers in a 60-square-meter apartment in a union neighborhood from a small town in Huelva where all men, as soon as they can, throw themselves into the sea.

“I tried to go to the sea too.

He would be about 13 years old.

My father would go to Morocco for 15 days and then, when he returned home for another 15 days, he would fish closer, on the coast, from three in the morning to six in the afternoon.

It's a pretty sacrificed life and he didn't want me to dedicate myself to that.

But I insisted and I accompanied him one summer day.

I remember it perfectly, there was a lot of fog, I got very dizzy and I didn't stop vomiting.

It happens to many, who spend the first few weeks vomiting,

but they keep going and going, until they get used to it.

I was the one who said after that: 'This is not for me'.

And my father happily blurted out: 'I told you so'.

That “I told you” is pronounced calmly and smilingly by Manuel Carrasco with his characteristic Isla Cristina accent (turning the “tees” into “ch” and inhaling the “jotas”) on an armchair in a hotel room from which they have just left. dating makeup artists and stylists.

“I am self-taught and I have spent many hours learning everything that this profession entails, which has many ins and outs”, says Manuel Carrasco. In this photo he is wearing a Fendi jacket, pants and sneakers, and a Deus Ex Machina sweatshirt. Yago Castromil

Parsimoniously and ordering the words as if he were singing a copla, he explains that his older brothers were not allowed to be fishermen either by their father: now they are house painters, which he was also.

His little sister (“she's so big. She ran us all!”) works in a store.

As he has recounted many times without embarrassment, of all the family members, he was the only one who finished EGB.

“You have to imagine what that was like: it was a neighborhood of very humble houses built by the Marine Institute in the 1970s and some of them were occupied even before they were finished, the streets were sandy and we were there all day playing card. football.

My environment has been one of go-getters, of shellfish.

We lived a little from day to day and there was no notion of anything else.

My mother raised us and at the same time went to work in the fields while my father had no other option but to fish.

Keep in mind that Isla Cristina is the second port in Spain, the first in Andalusia.

My uncles, all my cousins, most of my friends, all are dedicated to the sea.

And well, imagine, my friends have hands that are three times as big and worked as me, ”she says, showing her calloused fingers, full of silver rings.

Now he is very far from the sea and his origins, a few meters from the Santiago Bernabéu stadium, the next place he dreams of filling, although he does not boast of it.

Carrasco displays a wise prudence that can be confused with humility.

He is not crazy, but he is not ashamed to say that nobody has given him anything: “I am self-taught and I have dedicated many hours to learning everything that this profession entails, which has many ins and outs.

But, especially on a musical level, I've always been very aware of what I didn't know.

I had never played the piano in my life and now I go out to a stadium with 70,000 people and sing and play the piano.

I have acquired much more musical culture than I had.

I listen, I see, I analyze the way others write because I like to understand.

from the

, for example, I listen to absolutely everything, I know them all.

Also urban.

Then I do what comes to me after having understood all that.

I think one of my big secrets is that you have to be real.

You can't do what you like just because you like it.

One has to do what is.

Do you understand what I'm saying?

For example: Bruce Springsteen freaks me out, but obviously I'm not him.

In fact, I have many similarities in certain things: his songs are inspired by the place where he was born and I feel recognized in that, but my language and my way have nothing to do with it.

He still had the influence of Bob Dylan, to tell you something, or Elvis Presley.

I could have had it from Camarón or Paco Toronjo… or from the world of carnival”.

Because the carnival and his comparsas were fundamental to his vocation:

At the age of 14, he convinced his father to let him take guitar lessons with El Chicha, another fisherman who taught the children to play.

His close friend Juanan perfectly remembers those classes, "by profession a maintenance officer and comparsista in my spare time", he says with a lot of joking on the other end of the phone: "He always liked to be in the background because he was very shy, but from a very young age He already directed the groups.

When we were having a bottle, you would still see groups of kids on the beach with cod at full speed and we were there with our songs.

He always had the admirers behind him, of course, and the disappointment of him.

He always talks about a girl from Seville who came in the summer and didn't pay attention to her.

But he didn't care much for women.

He was focused on composing because he needed something else, and he ended up recording a demo”.

None of this means that he was a saint, of course.

When he arrived in Madrid to try his luck in a television contest, Carrasco himself says that he "already had a run."

“When you go to a Manuel concert, you understand many things.

It's a scenic beast," says Gabi Montes, leader of the rock band Sexy Zebras, about Manuel Carrasco. Here, the man from Huelva wears a 'total look' by AMI and Veja sneakers. The rings are his. Yago Castromil

In other interviews he has told that from the age of 16 to 20 he lived his thug stage.

Smoking, drinking, some robberies in other people's orchards.

In this he simply says: "To the wise...".

Landing in the capital was not easy.

Getting rid of the

hindrance and a very successful debut, but with which he didn't feel that he was respecting his true musical identity, was complicated.

Then, at the beginning of his second decade in the industry, his popularity waned with two consecutive albums that gave a big drop in sales.

The fears and insecurities generated by the world in which he moved forced him to put himself in the hands of a therapist, to whom he turned to to appease his demons even when

, in 2015, got a comeback.

In 2018 he was awarded the Andalusian Medal.

"It is not easy to understand in all its dimensions how strong what has happened to Manuel is, the journey he has made," explains his wife, Almudena Navalón, a journalist and inveterate music lover who has been part of the capital's

and he met Carrasco one night of drinks in a bar in Malasaña, where a mutual friend introduced them.

Although she adores visiting her husband's family and is happy when she goes to Isla Cristina, where she feels supported and loved, she is aware of the social gap that separates them —although she was born in Huelva, she became a "madriluza", he grew up in Madrid, studied at the SEK and graduated in Journalism—, but also from all the prejudices he has had to face: “Now it is not like before.

There was a lot of taboo.

That has already been lost and no one apologizes for playing reggaeton or a song by Andy and Lucas.

When I started with it, some purist friends told me: 'But what do you do with this one?'.

And today they get along great, they talk about everything and freak out, of course.

The leader of the rock band Sexy Zebras, Gabi Montes, is one such convert.

And in that conversion, seeing him live played a fundamental role: “When you go to a concert by Manuel, you understand many things.

It's a scenic beast.

And I hallucinated with what I saw among the public: mothers, fathers, girls, boys, ”he explains.

For his new album, Carrasco has personally chosen a new producer, Paco Salazar, the same one who has created the particular sound of Pol Granch or Alice Wonder and who has revamped the universes of Dani Martín or Pablo Alborán.

Salazar, speaking from a recording studio, knows that the producers are suspicious: “Manuel composes all his songs.

And if that material was not good, no matter how much I did, there would be nothing to scratch.

You may or may not like him, but there is no doubt that he has an innate talent for melodies, something very powerful that reaches a lot of people.

He's an obsessive guy to the point of sickness: he knows exactly what he wants.

For this album, for example, we had to re-record vocals when we were about to remaster.

And the fact is that he was right: he was better off ”.

And he speaks with similar enthusiasm about the artist's live performances: “It's a very impressive experience.

He thinks that Manuel is not Rosalía.

In other words, anyone can get on Rosalía's car: you or me, even if we didn't know any of her songs, we could end up at a concert by her just because it's her.

But in the case of Manuel, each ticket that he sells is to someone who goes to see him because he is a true fan ”.

Among those fans there are historical ones, such as Eva Barea from Cádiz, who has followed him for 22 years and has gone to see him live 22 times, but also his 17-year-old son, Aimar, who is also a fan of Bad Bunny and Anuel.

"I have been in my new life for 20 years and yet I feel that in this new life I am adapted. It is not that it is not a real life, it is that my true self is that [el de Isla Cristina]," says Carrasco. Here he has garments from the Balenciaga collaboration with Adidas and a Balenciaga ring. Yago Castromil

Manuel Carrasco's grandmother had a picture frame with a photo of Felipe González on the stretcher table in her house.

He doesn't like to talk about politics or give lessons about anything, but on the way to the Bernabéu, sitting in a van with the whole team around him, he does concede that in his town they have always been on the left.

Although he now lives in an upper-middle-class suburb where, when touring allows, he shares the upbringing of his two children with his wife (“I could never be with a man who wasn't a feminist,” she says), he returns whenever can: “Life has changed a lot for me, obviously, but I'm still the same there.

We talk a lot about the carnival, about the jobs there, and my friends never ask me to talk about myself, which I love because I totally reconnect with that world.

It's incredible because I've been in my new life for 20 years and yet I feel that in this new life I'm adapted.

It is not that it is not a real life, it is that my true self is that one ”.

In fact, for the video clip of

, one of the main songs from his new album,

(Universal), has returned to the neighborhood where he grew up.

And while he's proud of his past, he's also glad that things have changed a lot since his childhood.

“For those who have not experienced it, it is difficult to understand that feeling of going anywhere prematurely with defeat.

It was like a lot of things weren't for us.

On his day, for example, I thought about going to high school, but then he told me: 'No, it's very difficult.'

And I accepted that this was the case.

That has changed: my niece is studying at the university.

There are many other children who directly want to do the work of their grandparents, of their parents.

And, hey, no problem, but that they have the possibility and the certainty that, if they want, they can do something else.

I am the proof that it can be done”.

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