The pleasures and sins of Vanesa Martín: "I am proud to fall in love with whoever I want"

When Vanesa Martín (Málaga, 42 years old) put together the handful of songs that would end up shaping her first album, her father asked her: "But let's see, girl, who is the son of a

that is doing you so much harm?"

Martín then explained to her father, as he now explains to this journalist, that her themes are not always autobiographical.

"If I lived everything I sing, at the rhythm I write, it would be like a psychologist would study me," he jokes in the diaphanous space in the center of Madrid where he presents

, the eighth album since the one that scared his father. back in 2006.

Despite the title, she assures that she does not understand sin as such.

"Many years ago I worked on guilt and it left my life," she points out in conversation with EL PAÍS.

She knows the pleasures, and she enjoys them, something else.

“Sex, traveling, sharing, music, dark chocolate…”.

She says she is happy, finding a new balance through the composition.

“I'm like exploring myself, searching.

And this album responds to that search and that need for exploration”.

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Vanesa Martín: "Seven times yes' has been a psychomagic album"

Vanesa Martín is impressive in a black and white suit and a full color look.

Her eyes are alive, rather than made-up, it would be said that they are underlined by the eyeliner, which gives her an air between

and pharaonic.

Her gaze, however, avoids direct contact.

She wanders around the room, looking for the right words for each answer.

Martín began to write songs as a form of relief.

Heartbreak was his first muse, but then came passion, equality, introspection or social issues.

In this way, he explains, he has composed a varied album, which she compares to a mountain range, "it has the deepest and highest of my being", or to a paella, "because it has many ingredients".

The album was recorded between Madrid and Miami.

She has nods to her Latin American audience (she has just returned from a tour that has led her to sell out tickets in Mexico or Argentina), such as her collaboration with the Mexican duo Jesse & Joy.

But that international vision does not mean that she has lost her roots.

Pleasures and Sins

offers a friendly flamenco.

Already heard, without that necessarily meaning a bad thing.

Goes in easy and leaves hard.

In the video clip of one of the advance songs,

, Martín shares the stage with the bailaora Sara Baras.

“I have dreamed big and it has come true,” she says of this collaboration.

“We had been wanting to do something together for a long time and it has been magical.”

In the song, he sings: "I like to fantasize about you, to think of you slowly and also barefoot."

Conjugates a story of heartbreak in feminine.

Asked about that artistic decision and if it has been difficult for her to publicly assume her identity in a world that still penalizes those who deviate from the norm in sales, the singer closes the band.

"It's just that talking about certain things already seems a bit stupid to me.

It's like talking about... the AVE. Don't we already know that the AVE goes at

speed?

Do we have to remember it every day? ”, She blurts out visibly angry.

Martín declared himself not heterosexual last July, in an interview in

magazine in which he assured that he had "loved wonderful women."

She has not spoken openly about it again, being elusive and ambiguous.

Not out of objection, she explains, but out of discretion.

“I am very proud to feel how I feel, to fall in love with whoever I want.

What happens is that talking about it is forced... Do you ask Pablo López who she has slept with?

So why do you have to ask me?"

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Vanesa Martín sings to love, but does not tell about it.

She is more comfortable chatting about songs.

With those of her last album, she adds 120 studio recordings, a figure as round as it is impressive.

She confesses that she does not know them all by heart, and that she has sometimes had to "compose on the fly" on stage.

Lucky that she has hundreds of prompters among the public.

“When I get lost I read lips, I let myself be carried away by people's mouths.

In the first row there is always my savior, ”she explains.

Now she has thousands of fans all over the world, but she fondly remembers one of the first, Marifé de Triana.

The copla singer lived just a hundred meters from Martín's childhood home and a mutual friend introduced them.

She keeps a photo from those afternoons with the following dedication: "To the best poetess I have met in recent times."

She also keeps a piece of advice, which she did not understand at the time, but which over the years she has appreciated and put into practice.

She “She told me: 'Don't ever forget that you have to write to the people.

No matter how much verb you have, no matter how much syntactic capacity, no matter how much emotional intelligence…'.

And I am like that.

My message is clear, I can insert a fold or an adjective.

But it is understood to me.

Always".

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