Paulina Rubio: "Music saved me from everything and everyone"

The Flemish would call it a goblin, the Parisians as je ne sais quoi and the Anglo-Saxons as x factor, but what is common and undoubted is that she has it. That innate and magnetic charisma that makes all heads turn in his path to the point of ignoring for a few seconds any other thought present in his mind. For example, the concern about the hour and a half of delay from the time set for the meeting and that forces to schedule a new appointment with this rockstar. But as Gandalf said, "a magician does not arrive late or early, but just when he proposes it", and Paulina Rubio (Mexico City, 51 years old) must know a moment of magic. This is the only way to understand his idyll with the success that already extends for four decades and that he is now trying to extend with the single No es mi culpa, a catchy pop song that claims the nights of partying, "tequila and show" after the dark pandemic times and rescues his most uninhibited soul. "In order to create you have to suffer and bring out the girl in you. My art is the way to express my guajiro dreams and return to the roots, to the five elements, to the purity of having my hair scrambled and disheveled, "he explains in conversation with EL PAÍS.

The Mexican arrives at the appointment wearing her iconic miniskirt, perhaps the most characteristic garment of her of all, with a white shirt with a romantic air, oversize denim jacket full of fringes and the opportune touch dosmilero: socks with heels. Throughout the day he will not get rid of large sunglasses that exercise, it is intuited, as a calculated screen between the artist and the person. She poses generously before the photographer, she proposes, but she lets herself be done and decides to start an interview herself that will continue the next day, already by phone. "How long have you been a journalist in EL PAÍS?" he asks in a friendly and curious tone. Once the query is answered, not without bewilderment, Rubio gets up from the stool and before leaving for the next commitment, proclaims: "It's the best newspaper." Boris Izaguirre was right when he compared her in these pages to a GPS, "because it takes you where she wants."

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Just finished a yoga class, the interpreter of hits like Y yo sigo aquí or Ni una sola palabra shares her joy at being able to enjoy what she calls her second homeland. "I love walking through old Madrid and getting lost in its alleys incognito. Where I've been happiest here is in the neighborhood of La Latina." Famous since before she was born and star of the children's group Timbiriche with just 11 years, she spent the first summers of her life in the Galician place of Trasanquelos (A Coruña), sent by her mother, the actress Susana Dosamantes, to connect with her Spanish ancestry. "My grandmother Macuca and her sister picked us up in Barajas, in an impressive Renault Twingo from the seventies, and I sang to them," she recalls touchingly. "I remember running with my brother, the swings, being wild without shoes and trying to hunt the mullets under the stones of the river. We had an electric piano and that's when I started making melodies all over town."

In her words, it is precisely this connection with her 'I' as a child, oblivious to any fear, one of the keys to her decades of success in the industry: "I imagine it has to do with being authentic and transparent. I'm a warrior and I like cane." The Mexican offers short answers and closer to esotericism than to the calculated argument of any other artist in promotion. With it are not worth scripts, it is a state of mind: "I have skin like a dolphin: thick and soft", "I am a multicolored prism" or "I am not an object, I am a soul" are some of his reflections. She says she is reset, focused on the here and now, cured as a whole – "from covid to scares" – and appreciates the therapeutic effect her craft has had on her. "Music has healed me and is still my medicine. He saved me from everything and everyone. I heal my audience with my lyrics and they do it with me," he corroborates.

Singer Paulina Rubio in an interview on May 15, 2023, in Madrid. JUAN BARBOSA

His world changed last July after the death of his mother, known as "the most beautiful face of Mexico," at age 74. "For me there is a before and after," he acknowledges. "In grief there are no shortcuts. You have to be authentic and vulnerable, go day by day. I feel fortunate to have had such a strong and courageous mother, who was always with me." Asked about the parallels between her childhood and that of her two children, Andrea Nicolás and Eros —fruit of her relationships with businessman Colate Vallejo-Nágera and singer Gerardo Bazúa, respectively—, the artist appeals to the generosity of her offspring: "For them it is something natural and organic, they understand it as a way of life and a legacy. They know that if their mom goes to Disney maybe they have to take a couple of photos, like Mickey, but I explain that they have to give a little and take it well. They are fantastic and pure."

No one understands It's not my fault like Paulina Rubio's swan song. The one from Mexico City wants more and says she is willing to fill this summer with songs and concerts. "I have many new projects: with editors, docuseries, biopics... But I feel like a studio singer and I enjoy my catalog." Whoever took Latin pop to the top of the charts around the world is convinced that he can repeat the feat. The "golden girl" is back, although it does not seem that her longest-lived and shared nickname pleases her too much: "I only like labels to take them off. Call me Pau... and you will find me."