"Thanks to always having had a job that provided for me, whatever it was, I have done, do, and will do whatever I feel like, without anyone prohibiting or imposing it on me. That is very important, it's great, even if it sometimes causes ulcers." The writer, agitator, and cultural manager, José Luis Martín, states this while having an American coffee with ice at the bar, "to clear my head from the wild insomnia I sometimes suffer from and which can last for weeks."
In the background, Piper at the Gates of Dawn, the debut of his beloved Pink Floyd, fills the air with some of the best notes of British psychedelia and saves the locals from "algorithm- and record label interest-based radio formulas, garbage" and from talk shows or news programs, "because for lies, we can tell them ourselves."
Born in Barcelona in 1963 and raised "in a dark and poor house, where the bastard Galician was adored, the one with the raised arm and who they say was missing a testicle, where abuse was our daily bread," he left at eighteen "never to return." And with the vital mission of not projecting those dynamics onto his family, his wife and daughters. "For now, I think I've succeeded, but it's a constant struggle."
He has held countless jobs, "from ragpicker to drug dealer, alcohol trafficker, stuffing electoral propaganda for legal but completely immoral political parties, that is, all of them." For eight years, he worked as a taxi driver, almost always on the complicated night shift, "and one day they told me they had signed me up for an opposition without my knowing it, and I had to go so as not to be rude, and I passed, so I've been working for the L'Hospitalet City Council for thirty-nine years as something similar to a culture technician, but getting paid as an assistant, and begging and wishing to retire." In parallel, and as his friend Carles Llacer once wrote, José Luis is "a guy who does whatever he wants."
Until they kick him out
Like so many young people in the 80s and 90s, passionate about less obvious music, the regular customer got his start making fanzines and then, later, moved on to "a very popular music magazine, from which I was fired for not wanting to change the review of an Los Ilegales album, for which the company had placed the back cover as an advertisement." Another crazy project was "when I was called by a pornographic publisher to make the magazine Free Rock, which I directed for five years, until it started making profits and, therefore, was no longer useful for them to deduct taxes from their obscene magazines, so they fired me." The next step was to found the magazine Bad, "with which we reached the whole country, but I didn't register the name and a guy smarter than me, or so he thought, who collaborated with me, launched Bad Magazine and sued me, so I turned it into Bad Music and it's still going."
But Bad Music is also a radio show and became a television program. "I got my start in pirate stations, then moved to Radio Cornellà, Radio L'Hospitalet, ComRàdio and now on ScannerFM. I also did ten years of television, because one day, Carlos Torreiro, director of Radio and TV L'Hospitalet, told me I didn't have the guts to do Bad Music on TV and I'm a bit of a McFly, so a decade passed until we were fired for not meeting the Catalan quota. We recorded more than 2,800 concerts. We have a visual archive that will be eaten by humidity or rats, because we tried to donate it to the libraries of L'Hospitalet, but they don't know what to do with the image rights," he laments before ordering a "very cold" beer, and not an artisanal one.
Involved in the organization of concerts and festivals, his musical knowledge has led him to sign a good number of biographies of some rock and pop musicians such as Deep Purple, Queen or Elton John and he even took on the challenge of directing the documentary Barna Blues. The History of Blues in Barcelona, whose realization makes him feel especially proud.
Now he has just debuted with the first installment of a black novel and pulp saga, Historias del 227, based on his years as a taxi driver. The first volume, Una noche a muerte, is already available and six more are written. And, of course, the author plans to continue with the project "until they fire me."
The stolen city
The writer asserts that Barcelona was a city he loved as a young man, "I loved it, with its danger, its decay, its Barrio Chino, its urban tribes, its fights and shenanigans." But, since the Olympics, he believes things changed "and although they sold everything for the better, the truth is that it has degenerated into a showcase for tourists, gentrification has finished it off and today it is a city I don't recognize, only for guiris, kicking neighbors out of the neighborhoods, closing down traditional establishments. No matter how much they sell things like the superblocks for people, it's a lie, they are for tourists, everything for them. Barcelona has been stolen from us and when that happens it's because there's some politician putting their hand out and collecting benefits. What disgusts me most about the city are the politicians, whatever their color, because they have always governed with their backs to the citizens and facing the goal of making a city where everyone is welcomed and tolerated, except those from here."
The local claims pride in a city "that carried out the La Canadiense Strike, which was the capital of European anarchism for many years, the most libertarian city on the planet, which had episodes like the Tragic Week or the tram strike of March 1951, which was the first slap in the face from a regime where you'd get shot against the wall of Montjuïc cemetery for disrespecting a gentleman. And with all this history of ours, now we just settle for winning the football league or the Champions League or whatever it's called. The city is dead."
---What's not dead is our gastronomic offer, in case you want to have something for lunch. We have everything: menu, combo plates, sandwiches or something sweet.
José Luis Martín smiles sadly under his abundant beard. "Before I preferred sweet, but with age I changed to savory. Unfortunately, now nothing at all. They have forbidden me sugar and salt, so I am quite bland and insipid."
A few seconds pass, he shrugs and finishes, laughing:
---Although if I'm going to sin, I prefer savory: give me a good cheese, whatever kind it is, and forget everything else!