Is it easier to sing on the jails of 36 than on the current jails?

It is certainly easier to sing about the current prisons. Lawyers are known, on many occasions they have written texts in jail, and they have an audience, which is known as a mass of militants, a circuit. It may be too easy, the song becomes something for the prisoners, without you wanting to. I mean, something that's not singing. A gesture of attachment. It is more difficult to sing the prisoners of 36, most of the Basques who were from the PNV. This reduces, a priori, the audience. He doesn't know music lovers, he doesn't know the presses. And their verses, eighty years later, are still incarcerated. I thought I had to come out of the dark. It is a gesture of attachment, but less pronounced, it is not immediate. It calls for a little reflection. I find that more interesting.

What have you been told in Tolosaldea? Or what do you want me to tell you...?

They haven't told me anything yet. But singing those songs there would be nice. From there it was Tximela, in the San Blas district, for sure. Anttonio, his partner as well. Tolosa has given a few descendants of which one can boast. The family told me that when Franco came to San Sebastian, they were controlled, they were often stopped. I was told that when Tximela returned from Puerto Santa María, the commuting to jail was not over. The ikurrina would have been placed on the tip of Izaskun or in one of the churches and from there she was transferred to Ondarreta prison. Let us return the compensation. Because of the importance of their contribution. “If I am killed, the descendants will sing.”

What has the life of Captain Tximela taught you?

They did it as captain at the age of twenty-two. I don't see myself at the age of twenty-two, not a sergeant. In prison, I do not feel able to write their free and tied verses, with such humour and with such sensitivity. Reading all of his work, I think in jail he was freer than ever to create verses. More precisely, through the creation he had managed to take over the prison. It has given me a lesson that bertso, painting, music -- it can be freer.

Some people say that the things of war bored us. What do you say?

Some get bored easily. How many movies have we made of that one from 1936-1937? How many monuments do the Gudaris and the militiamen have? Have these pacifists traveled to Euskal Herria? How many letters have you written to the French President to remove the monuments in all villages in tribute to the deaths in the two World Wars? To all those Republican men and women who were murdered by the ravines, I'd better leave them there. It is essential for me to put myself on the side of the oppressed, the background asks me, like many others. I believe that clarifying the war is attacking itself.

They're all dark songs. Desolate situation, loneliness, naked inner reflection in form and essence. What have you searched for with this album? What are you looking for in the concerts?

I'd like to thrill the audience just like the letters touched me. For this I have resorted to the nudity to which you refer, and the choice of guitar also comes from there. When Juanba Berasategi taught me the images, listening to the songs, I created the images for the record, I was very happy, I thought the three of us were in the same inner reflection, Tximela, Berasategi and I.

You wanted to pay tribute to the precursors of today's modern song. For example, your song remembers the early times of Xabier Lete. A tribute? Confession? Nostalgia? Is there any other purpose, reason or pretext?

A little bit of everything. As a young man we have been looking at those ahead and their influence is evident. They were pioneers. They had beautiful and hard debates about the song and the difficulties they had in society were not at all futile. It often seems to me that we have not gone back in many areas and that we are going back to the debates of their time. For example, do you have to pay the singer? At that time of punishment... On the other hand, it is not a tribute, it is not a nostalgia. Also what they taught us is worth, and proof that this pathway and aesthetic can still bear fruit. “The man has been imprisoned, what has he said, what has he done?” Lete sang. For example, man has faced fascism and continues to do so in prison.

Can the pain in the verses be transmitted with a more “modern” mold?

How you understand modernity ... On the one hand, we call it a modern song, and on the other, we call it an old-fashioned song. It could be more rocker, more blusero even... But those trendy styles don't always guarantee modernity. A more contemporary aesthetic can sing reactionary things. It is not easy to deal with it when it comes to drafting a text. The election I've made for me made sense to sing these verses. In the solitary guitar, the voice comes out raw, in the sotility they had more strength. The strength of the melody and the opportunity of the naked voice and almost alone made me fear, but on the other hand, it seemed to me that I could improve my message.

You have luxury collaborations like Juanba Berasategi. How have you managed to get you to do cover and design jobs for you?

This is not the first time Juanba has done so. We were also in Real politik together. He is a man with a lot of experience and, above all, with a lot of creativity. I’ve learned a lot with him; against himself, he broke and remade… He took it as a challenge, he likes it, forcing himself, trying the unusual…

Tximela has many categorical phrases that can be released from the verse and brought to the current context: “If Hoinbeste alfer will live the ordia that we must do,” “The war is over but the peace has not been made”… What is your favorite? Why?

Once he sings the misery of war, he ends by saying: “That’s war, and war has benefited many others.” It's very good, in a small expression, it explains what wars come up with. I really like that other, “With the same weapons you will not enter mythical!” That warrior's pride. Captain's guard.