Category: Uncategorized

Oliver Hutton, reading Law and Spanish at Oxford

During my year abroad in Barcelona I have lived next to the Basílica de Santa María del Mar. The fascinating story of this grand church, which I cannot help but glance at every time I walk past, was popularised by the lawyer and author barcelonés, Ildefonso Falcones, in his 2006 bestseller La catedral del mar. And I think it is a story that bears knowing.

Santa María stands in the neighbourhood of La Ribera, which began life beyond the city walls as a humble barrio for fishermen. In the early days of Christianity, the inhabitants built a small chapel reportedly on the site where Eulalia, co-patron saint of Barcelona, was martyred in the year 303. La Ribera, of course, means ‘the shore’, and that was where it lay. What is now the seafront neighbourhood, Barceloneta, remained underwater until centuries later.

By the 13^th century, Barcelona’s burgeoning merchant class was growing too big for the original Roman precinct. La Ribera’s enviable position between the port and the old city made it an attractive candidate for expansion. The explosion of commercial activity in the neighbourhood is reflected in the street names which today still refer to money changers, mirror-makers, silversmiths and other craftsmen who built Barcelona’s medieval prosperity on the back of Mediterranean trade.

La Ribera’s maritime success soon caught the attention of the nobility, who lined carrer de montcada with grand mansions that stand to this day. La Ribera now needed a church that could match its material wealth, and thus began in 1329 the construction of Santa María del Mar.

What is distinctive about Santa María, Falcones tells us, is that it was built by and for the common people of La Ribera, not the elites. Its creation owed to the vecinos’ desire for a spiritual monument of their own which, unlike the city’s cathedral whose construction began in 1298, did not depend on the nobility’s backing. This truth was chiselled onto the very first stone, laid beneath the main altar, which bore only the shield of the parish of La Ribera, to whom Santa María would exclusively belong.

With the help of Bernat Llull, the canon who would become Santa María del Mar’s first archdeacon, permission to build was swiftly obtained from the church authorities. At the same time, wealthy merchants in the neighbourhood were quick to offer financing. All parishioners helped in the building process, while stone was obtained from the quarries on the mountain of Montjuïc, almost three miles away. The arduous task of transporting the giant stones was assumed by the bastaixos, the city’s stevedores. They did so on their backs, and for free – not as slaves but out of devotion to the Virgin Mary, wishing to do what they could to honour her. Thus the people of La Ribera built Santa María, with either their money or their labour.

Construction finished in what was then a record time of 54 years, halted only once by the arrival of the Black Death in 1348. Barcelona cathedral, financed by the king and the church, took twice as long to materialise. And it is because of Santa Maria’s short construction period, avoiding changes in architectural style, that it is the only surviving church built in the pure Catalan Gothic style. Berenguer de Montagut and Ramón Despuig were the architects from beginning to end, masterminding the distinctive features that continue to mesmerise visitors: the two octagonal towers; the equal height of the three naves, making the interior seem larger from the inside than from without; the countless stained glass windows, flooding the interior with natural light; the vast rose window, in the middle of which Mary is being crowned; and, above all, the exquisite harmony of its proportions.

Besides the plague, Santa María has endured many challenges since its construction. An earthquake killed over thirty worshippers in 1428 and caused the rose window to be replaced. Further damage was inflicted by the War of the Spanish Succession, when in 1714 La Ribera was the last neighbourhood to fall to the forces of Philip V. Just beside Santa María, the memorial of the Fossar de les Morreres and its flame that never stops burning commemorate those who died defending the city. Later on, during the Civil War, a fire destroyed the interior furnishings. Various restorations were necessary in the following years, including in the 1960s when funds were raised from various entities including FC Barcelona, explaining the presence of the football club’s crest on one of the restored stained glass windows.

Santa María’s resilience is complemented by its capacity to inspire. It is said to be here, after all, that Antoni Gaudí was moved to create the Sagrada Familia. And as well as the work of Falcones, Santa María has also appeared in Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s bestsellers La sombra del viento and El juego del ángel. It even has its own Netflix series.

Set against the other themes of La catedral del mar, the construction of Santa María takes on added meaning. Falcones’ novel lays bare the horrors of feudalism, opening with a harrowing illustration of the medieval lord’s droit du seigneur. The novel’s protagonist, Arnau Estanyol, escapes with his father from serfdom in the Catalan countryside only to become servants of the nobility in Barcelona. Many die as pawns of war or at the hands of the plague. The city’s Jewish population, housed in the call, is attacked and stigmatised.

Yet alongside this, the construction of Santa María embodies the best of human nature – a story of one neighbourhood’s industriousness and devotion, of what the common people could achieve with a vocation of their own, of their selflessness to donate and sweat for the beauty we now admire. For the art critic Robert Hughes – and doubtless many barceloneses and visitors alike over the centuries – Santa María del Mar is the most magnificent and solemn place in all of Spain. Despite its beauty, however, one is perhaps moved more by the simple figures of two bastaixos carved on the door of the main entrance, straining under their colossal loads.

Raúl Sánchez Saura, BAS editor

“Putas, salid de vuestras madrigueras como conejas, sois unas putas ninfómanas, os prometo que vais a follar todas en la capea, ¡vamos Ahuja!” 

A principios del presente curso académico, un centenar de estudiantes varones del colegio mayor Elías Ahuja, no mixto, dedicaron estos insultos desde las ventanas de sus cuartos al colegio vecino, Santa Monica, de chicas. 

El escándalo llegó a toda España en menos de 24 horas, con un juicio unánime. Desde el presidente de Gobierno hasta el líder de la oposición, se condenaba activamente esta agresión machista proveniente de algunos de los estudiantes más privilegiados del país. Antiguas estudiantes del Santa Mónica denunciaron que durante años habían recibido insultos así a diario sin que nadie hiciera nada. Las consecuencias se sucedieron rápidamente, con la Fiscalía de Madrid iniciando investigaciones contra el Elías Ahuja, el propio colegio expulsando a uno de los estudiantes involucrados, y forzando a un reducido número de otros a tomar un curso sobre relaciones de género. También se ha iniciado una discusion nacional sobre el extraño estatus de los colegios mayores en la sociedad universitaria española. 

De gestión privada, los colegios mayores acogen a estudiantes de clases altas, cuyas familias pagan aproximadamente 1200 euros mensuales por su estancia allí. Esta cifra está alejada de las posibilidades económicas del común de las familias, y la imagen de privilegio se refuerza cuando se comprueba la lista de antiguos estudiantes del Elías Ahuja, consistente de empresarios y políticos conservadores.  

No sorprende entonces que se haya evidenciado una fuerte distancia entre el escándalo nacional y la reacción por parte de ambos colegios. Desde el Elías Ahuja se ha asegurado que el abuso unánime les ha sorprendido y no han contado con capacidad de respuesta para pararlo. Los estudiantes de ambos colegios han desmentido que esto fuera posible, al tratarse de una tradición. Al mismo tiempo, algunas estudiantes del Santa Mónica incluso han defendido públicamente esta actuación, argumentando que no se puede condenar una costumbre.  

La defensa de los agresores por parte de sus víctimas contrasta con la batería de propuestas feministas del actual gobierno. Estas incluyen la llamada ley Sí es sí, que prohíbe cualquier actividad sexual sin el consentimiento explícito de ambas partes. Sin embargo, estos colegios mayores no se hacen eco del actual clima político.  

Por ejemplo, la educación privada española suele caracterizarse por su adherencia a órdenes católicas. Tanto el Elías Ahuja como el Santa Mónica están gestionados por la Orden de San Agustín, por ejemplo, aunque estén asociados a la Universidad Complutense de Madrid, pública. 

A diferencia de la educación privada británica, la española, aunque busca su distanciamiento con respecto a la pública, tiende a poner el énfasis en los valores religiosos, sin contar con los mismos logros académicos. En España, las mejores notas de acceso a la universidad a nivel nacional pertenecen, con amplio margen, a estudiantes de la pública.  

Esto se debe a que la educación privada española responde a valores extra-académicos basados en el catolicismo. Aquí se evidencia el legado de siglos de monopolio educativo por parte de la Iglesia. Aunque el Estado ya no financie la educación privada española, esta enfatiza el privilegio y exclusividad de sus miembros, en un entorno caracterizado por la casi total ausencia de estudiantado extranjero y de familia humilde. Así, los colegios privados siguen el curriculum estatal en un entorno muy distinto a la realidad demográfica del país, incluso más que en el caso británico. Sin embargo, esta apuesta educativa no conlleva necesariamente unos mejores resultados académicos que los encontrados en la educación pública. 

La educación privada española, mientras tanto, continúa con una endeble revisión de su proyecto educativo ante esta nueva polémica del Elías Ahuja, que se suma a la de hace pocos años, cuando se descubrió una grabación de sus estudiantes realizando el saludo fascista al grito de ‘Sieg Hiel’.  

BAS editor Sander Berg

It is January, the first lesson back after Christmas. At the start of the lesson a finger
shoots up. ‘Sir, when are we going to talk about paedophilia?’

Before the Christmas holidays I had asked my Year 13 to read closely the last two
chapters of Del amor y otros demonios by Gabriel García Márquez. They had all
ostensibly read the novel in English over the summer, so in theory this should have
been a second reading, in Spanish this time. Ostensibly. In theory.

I had mentioned the problematic relationship between Delaura and Sierva María
before and I had given them a ‘trigger warning’, but it was not until they (some of
them at least) had studied the text in detail that they cottoned on to the fact that
Delaura is a 36-year old priest who falls in love (lust) with the 12-year old Sierva
María. Yes, he is three times her age and she is barely pubescent. Cringeworthy
doesn’t come close. Two of the girls in the class described how they found reading it
more uncomfortable (even) than some scenes in Almodóvar’s Talk to Her. Given the
discomfort, it is legitimate to raise the question whether we should read such novels
with our students. Short answer: yes.

We live in interesting times. Not as in the purported Chinese curse — “May you live in interesting times” — would have it, but perhaps not entirely unlike it either. In the past five years or so, secondary school students have, like their contemporaries at university, become much more agitated and assertive.

More questioning and critical, but also less tolerant – ironically – and more sensitive, more easily outraged. Questions around race and gender in particular are real tinderboxes and potentially toxic. To a large extent this critical engagement is to be welcomed as long as it reflects a serious desire to question things and everyone involved is sincerely open to dialogue.

To understand what is happening in the awkward scenes in Márquez’s novel we
need to take two steps back. For Márquez, writing in Colombia in the second half of
the 20th century, a grown man falling in lust with a teenage girl would have been less toe-curling than it is for us. Even today the legal age of consent in Colombia is only 14.

A further step back takes us to the late 18th century and the Spanish colonial
elite, where the age difference might have been even less of a problem. Still, even
with those provisos, there is no need to assume that Márquez is condoning
Delaura’s obsession with Sierva María, much less excusing it, let alone promoting
paedophilia. Delaura’s falling in lust works on a few narrative levels.

On a personal level, he blames his sudden onrush of amorous feelings on the devil; it is a demonic force that takes hold of him. Initially, he does not believe that Sierva María is possessed by the devil and wants to save her. Perhaps he suffers from saviour syndrome. But when he suddenly feels sexually aroused, he convinces himself that it is the work of the devil. Etymologically, this makes sense: Sierva is possessed by the devil (the devil has taken ownership of her) and the devil in her attacks Delaura and besieges him (the origin of the word ‘obsession’).

In fact, quite a few of our terms related to (falling in) love are taken from demonology.
We say we are bewitched, bothered and bewildered, or that someone has put a spell
on us, or encourage someone to go do that voodoo that you do so well. We also
speak of someone’s charms, say we are enchanted when we meet someone
attractive and speak of being fascinated, originally a reference to the evil eye.
Delaura, then, takes literally what we have come to see as a commonplace
metaphor. As the title of the novel has it, love is just another demon.

On a more thematic level Delaura’s obsession with Sierva María works, too. The
novel is steeped in images of decay and decadence. It paints a picture of the dying
days of the Spanish empire, with a wheezing bishop, a nymphomaniac marquesa, a
feckless marqués putrefying away in his hammock, and crumbling buildings on every
street corner. Delaura’s moral turpitude can be read as a symbol of the corrosion and
corruption of Empire and Church.

It is also possible that Márquez, hardly a friend of the Catholic Church, by describing a priest’s obsession with a pubescent girl, might be referring to the institution’s moral
bankruptcy due to its many sex scandals.

Mark Twain once reportedly quipped that the rumours about his death had been
greatly exaggerated. The same is true about the assumption that Delaura has sex
with Sierva María. Sure, there is hanky-panky, and kisses and cuddles, and lots of poetry reading, but Delaura vows to remain a virgin until the day he can elope with
Sierva María and marry her. This hardly improves matters, of course, although I find
it interesting that the same students who first glossed over the age difference on a
second reading make the false assumption that the two have sex. They went from
not seeing the egregious nature of the relationship to seeing things that aren’t there.

A further complication is that Sierva María, after much-spirited resistance, seems to
accept Delaura. Maybe it is because, apart from a short spell with her father just
before she enters the convent, he is the first white person to pay any attention to her.
Maybe she is under the spell of Garcilaso’s love poetry. Perhaps she sees him as a
kind of older brother or a surrogate father. Or perhaps she suffers from Stockholm
syndrome. Who knows?

These are all nuanced questions, but then again, in the world as in good literature,
things are always more nuanced, never black and white. And that is why we need to
read novels like Del amor y otros demonios with our students. What better lesson in
the value of close reading and asking challenging questions and coming up with
nuanced and sometimes uncomfortable answers? What better way to get into a
different, even alien, mindset? We must also guide them and teach them how to
channel their immediate reactions, make them go beyond their initial discomfort and
cringe to take a step back and ask: what is this scene doing here? What does it
mean? What are some of its potential explanations and interpretations? But equally:
to what extent is the scene problematic? What prejudices does it show? What does
that tell us about the time and place in which the novel was set or written? If we cannot read works that challenge us and offer us a vision of the world or a description of events that we find difficult to digest, what, one should ask, are we left with?

In these fractious times, these challenging times, it behoves us teachers to continue to read and discuss ‘difficult’ texts. These can be Canonical, but there are plenty of
other works out there that are worth reading, and it is important to hear different
voices and learn about a wide variety of experiences. Except that we should not expect these works to be plain sailing, unproblematic and in complete agreement with what we already think and believe. We should leave our echo chambers and bubbles and zones of comfort sometimes and venture out into the wide and wonderful world called literature.

BAS editor Robin Wallis bids farewell to the Hispanists’ friend.

The Pre-U syllabus, first taught in 2008, ends its 15-year run this summer.

“It’ll be missed in Modern Languages, above all else,” one headteacher laments. Those accustomed to the challenge and scope of Pre-U share his regret. “The new A-level is so much more boring – my own students have already said so, quite literally,” one head of department ruefully told us. “So we’ll continue teaching the Pre-U content, adding in A-level exam technique at the end of the course.”

And so the cycle begun in 2008 comes full circle. At that time I enrolled my students for Pre-U because it appeared to offer a continuation of the largely satisfactory pre-2008 A-level syllabus. It seemed to me that the 99.9% of ML departments that in 2008 signed up to the new A-level were the ones making the change, even if they told themselves otherwise. In terms of content, there was more continuity in the Pre-U, but most schools worried at the idea of a qualification not called A-level.

So what did the 2008 change in A-level syllabus entail? For many Modern Languages teachers, it represented a dramatic lowering of expectations about what students could achieve. 

For example, the outgoing A-level syllabus had allowed students to choose any topic rooted in the Target Language (TL) culture for their speaking exam presentation and written coursework. By contrast, the new A-level required them to focus on general topics unrelated to the TL culture – infamously, in one sample speaking test, body piercings and tattoos. 

The pre-2008 A-level’s 1,500-word coursework assignment, which rewarded analytical skills, was replaced by a sub-section of the writing paper that required a 250-word answer to a general question along the lines of ‘Write about a character in the novel/play/film you have studied’. (The decision to drop coursework was a Qualifications Agency directive to both A-level and Pre-U exam boards.)

Teachers speculated at the time that the change in A-level was an anti-elitist manoeuvre by the authorities that regulate exam boards. The message seemed to be that if students were lucky enough to have teachers with expertise in film/literature/history etc it gave them an unfair advantage. Likewise, if teachers had been privileged enough to spend time in the TL country, the exam content should ensure that their students did not gain an unfair advantage as a result.

The upshot was that the content of ML A-level courses was reduced to ‘social science-lite’, ie teachers and students discussing or writing about (in the target language) their general opinions on issues such as piercings, social media, bicycle lanes… without any specialist understanding of these phenomena. By contrast, Pre-U Spanish students were studying – according to their interests, and those of their teachers – topics such as the Colombian drugs trade, the films of Almodóvar, the Castro regime, Moorish architecture, Goya, etc. 

Another attraction of the Pre-U was that, with its relatively small cohorts of candidates (never more than 300 a year in Spanish), the marking was widely seen as more reliable than that of A-level.

Although the original impetus for Pre-U came from academically ambitious schools wanting greater challenge for their students, the Cambridge exam board that took on the project was careful to ensure equivalence between A-level and the new qualification. Pre-U’s richer course content meant that at least 37.5% of the marks were awarded for cultural content, which gave weaker linguists a firmer foothold on the syllabus. The challenge for them was getting the right verb endings and adjective agreements. When it came to learning about, eg, ecotourism in Costa Rica or Spain’s Transition to democracy, the gap between weaker and stronger linguists narrowed. The result was often encouraging results for the ‘weaker’ pupils in their final exams. The most gifted pupils also benefitted from having their prowess more clearly recognised in the 9-tier Pre-U grade scale than was possible in A-level’s 6 tiers.

Herein, perhaps, lay the seeds of Pre-U’s eventual downfall.  Cambridge promoted the idea that the D1 grade allowed the very top tier of students to score higher than the highest grade available at A-level. However, university admissions tutors refused to allow students who happened to be at Pre-U schools to use this to their advantage. In admissions terms, the D1 fell flat. 

So too did the notion of the ‘Pre-U diploma’, ie three subjects taken at either Pre-U or A-level, ‘sandwiched’ between the Pre-U novelties of an Independent Research Project (IRP) and a ‘Global Perspectives’ qualification.  Although the latter caught on at a number of schools, its requirements were quirky, to the extent that, at some centres, it damaged confidence in the wider Pre-U qualification. The IRP likewise looked more convoluted than extended essay options offered at A-level and IB. Nor did it help that Pre-U’s one-year ‘Short Course’ (AS equivalent) in ML was withdrawn after a few years, causing some schools to abandon Pre-U.

Then there was the marketing. During the early years of Pre-U it was common to hear discussion in the news media about the failings of the A-level syllabuses. Such perceptions created, you would think, a perfect opportunity for Cambridge to promote the Pre-U to appeal to a wider audience. Yet barely a peep was heard in the media about Pre-U, and the marketing effort to schools and teachers was far from convincing.  (Cambridge’s perceived lack of support for ML teachers was one reason for the creation of this Bulletin, which was partly intended to make up for the shortfall.) 

Given this apparent timidity, Pre-U became a target for critics. Journalists questioned its fairness and modus operandi, not least when rogue teacher-examiners at a couple of schools abused their positions. The ensuing scandal forced Cambridge to introduce more involved and costlier security protocols, thus eroding Pre-U’s financial viability.

No doubt these factors weighed heavily when decisions were made about Pre-U’s future and the decision was taken to close it down.  The official reason, however, was that the new A-level syllabus coming into force in the 2020s had restored many features of the pre-2008 A-level and Pre-U, such as a linear course with a good range of films and literary texts. With A-levels restored to their former pedigree, the theory went, there was no longer a need for Pre-U.

For ML, there remains a gap between the quality of Pre-U and that of the new A-level.  Teachers have highlighted specific shortcomings of the A-level. One head of ML describes the speaking exam as “both prescriptive and vague, with teachers unable to offer any concrete assistance – the worst of both worlds”. Many also regret the abolition of the English-language essay on literature, which encouraged a more penetrating analysis of the texts and was strong preparation for university courses where essays are written in English. Another head of ML remarks that “Pre-U students found the comparative study of two or three works in Paper 4 intellectually motivating – a forerunner of the skills needed in higher education. Sadly, the new A-level lacks this.”

To my mind, Pre-U showed that the more confidence a syllabus places in the students’ capacity to tackle mature themes, the more those students will raise their game. High expectations led to high scores. Schools with a cautious, conservative culture used the excuse that ‘our pupils couldn’t cope with Pre-U’, when they in fact meant ‘our teachers don’t think they’re up to teaching it’. Fortunate the students and teachers who backed themselves to meet the challenge.

Perhaps the most telling endorsement of the Pre-U programme for me was that almost half my Year 13 Pre-U students chose to continue Spanish at university. Pre-U had made Spanish an integral part of their academic maturity and nourishment. We salute its founders. Long may the spirit of Pre-U live on in all who took part in the course. 

And good luck to those sitting the last Pre-U exams this summer.

BAS editor Helen Laurenson

May 2023 saw a veritable double whammy of Spanish and Latin American cantautores in London, with the Uruguayan Jorge Drexler appearing at the Barbican Hall eight years after the success of his performance at the Union Chapel, Islington, and el flaco himself, Joaquín Sabina, back in the Royal Albert Hall after a six-year interval.

Drexler’s links with Sabina run deep. It was the Spanish cantautor who saw the then medical doctor perform in a dive in Montevideo almost thirty years ago, and who subsequently encouraged him to try his luck in Madrid in 1995. Despite being introduced to an illustrious musical circle, including Víctor Manuel, Ana Belén and Ketama, Drexler started from zero in Spain – ‘recorrí el país con mi Renault Clio y dos músicos uruguayos, tocaba en salas de 60 personas’.

His latest appearance in London came at a very different stage of his career, as he rode the success of his 14^th studio album, Tinta y Tiempo, which in 2022 won seven Latin Grammy Awards – a healthy crop in comparison with the four awarded to Rosalía.

Drexler is perhaps best known for his song ‘Al otro lado del río’ from the 2004 film Diarios de motocicleta. Walter Salles, the film’s director, commissioned him to write the music. Drexler says ‘leí el guión a las ocho de la noche. Me fui a dormir temprano y soñé con la canción. Me desperté y la escribí prácticamente desde la cama’.

In an interview in La Nación, he attributes its success to the scene in the film where Ernesto (aka Che) Guevara crosses the river to the Leper Colony: ‘sentí que esa escena donde Ernesto cruzaba el río sintetizaba el leitmotif de la película y del personaje histórico. Que no todo está perdido. De remar en conjunto hacia un mundo utópico, que es el del otro lado’.

The lyrics are simple but present a clear sense of universal solidarity and hope:

                                    Clavo mi remo en el agua,

                                    Llevo tu remo en el mío,

                                    Creo que he visto una luz,

                                    Al otro lado del río.

                                    …

                                    Yo muy serio voy remando

                                    Muy adentro sonrío

                                    Creo que he visto una luz

                                    Al otro lado del río.

                                    …

Sobre todo creo que

                                    No todo está perdido

                                    Tanta lágrima, tanta lágrima

                                    Y yo, soy un vaso vacío

Son of a German Jewish doctor who fled to Uruguay in 1939 and a lapsed Catholic mother, Drexler has always considered himself, if not an outsider, a fluid mix of cultures and influences. ‘Yo soy un híbrido [y] cuando eres un híbrido te cuesta mucho más aceptar las categorías […] y la realidad es infinitamente densa cuanto más te acercas a una persona’.  

He recoils from being labelled un cantautor (singer-songwriter): ‘no me gusta [el término]. Para mí, que vivo de las palabras, cantautor es una conjunción, como choripán, que nunca entendí muy bien’.  His 2017 Ted Talk, ‘Poetry, Music and Identity’, reveals the evident literary process in his composition. Despite his protestations to the contrary – ‘pero eso no quiere decir que no me guste la canción de autor. Me gusta más cancionista, que es el que hace canciones’ – there is a clear intertextuality present in his works, and a poetic rigour. In May 2022, on his return to the Gran Rex Theatre Buenos Aires after a long absence, he revealed in an interview with La Nación, ‘Estoy en dos o tres chats de decimistas. Gente que escribe décimas con mucha capacidad y erudición. Escribimos sonetos, décimas, sextinas y villanelas. Más culto no puede ser.’

Challenged by ‘su maestro y amigo’ Joaquín Sabina in 2002 to write lyrics in ‘décimas’, starting with the lines written by Chicho Sánchez Ferlosio, ‘Yo soy un moro judío, / que vive con los cristianos, / no sé qué Dios es el mío, / ni cuáles son mis hermanos’, Drexler’s eventual song, ‘La Milonga del Moro Judío’, epitomises his approach to interculturality.  He recently sang it with a Palestinian singer in Mexico and is in the process of recording a version with an Israeli singer.

As well as shying away from the term cantautor, Drexler is reluctant to be labelled a ‘Latin singer’, given the diverse nuances of musical production across South America. ‘I love the extrovert and happy music of Colombia and Panama,’ he remarks. ‘In Uruguay and Argentina we are melancholic and intellectual’. He describes his 2014 album Bailar en la Cueva as ‘an attempt to kill what Uruguay’s dictatorship left in me 30 years earlier. What I couldn’t do in my youth, dance and be happy, I’m doing now’.

Drexler started his professional life practising medicine, like his father, an ear, nose and throat specialist. Music was initially what Drexler did on the side after clinic, until eventually dismaying his father by taking it up full time. In an interview with Latinolife, Drexler states, ‘working in a hospital, dealing with situations of healing and suffering, joy and pain, power and impotence, taught me a lot about relationships and people, and influenced my lyrics and my performances’. 

Whilst his switch to music was not entirely unsuccessful in Spain, the 1990s scene, with the Spice Girls and the Back Street Boys, was not immediately propitious. His third album, Frontera, did not sell well in Spain, but was an immediate hit in Argentina and Uruguay, ‘y ahí de golpe me volví una especie de símbolo de una generación, el tipo que mezcla folklore tipo Atahualpa Yupanqui con Beck’.

In the interim, Drexler co-wrote music for Rosario Flores, Pablo Milanés and Ana Torroja. In 2005, ‘Al otro lado del río’ won the Oscar for Best Song. Drexler himself was not allowed to perform the song at the ceremony as he was relatively unknown: Antonio Banderas and Carlos Santana were chosen instead.

Winning an Oscar at the age of 41 – the first ever for a song not sung in English – exemplifies the long road taken by Drexler, who remains philosophical and sanguine in his approach to both music and life: ‘a mí lo que me interesan son los procesos…’.

Find out more about Jorge Drexler:

Jorge Drexler: la crisis que lo paralizó, la neofobia y las dos “revoluciones” que tuvo en su vida – LA NACION

Jorge Drexler: Grammy Preview 2023 – Rolling Stone

Jorge Drexler: Poetry, music and identity (with English subtitles) | TED – YouTube