"As a teenager, my head exploded when I heard The Sonics and I still suffer the after-effects. I suspect that Gerry Roslie's voice, along with JG Ballard's books, shaped me on that strange path towards what is supposed to be adulthood. I still wouldn't know if for the better." The anthropologist, journalist, and writer, Mar Padilla, doesn't lose her smile, as she recalls how those strident sounds of the second half of the 20th century, R&R, R&B, punk rock in all its forms, were "my glue to fly out of the nest, make friends in Barcelona, throughout the country and across the seas. And every day I thank Saint Little Richard for it!
Hardened in the Barcelona musical underground, she sips an American coffee while explaining how she even played in two bands, Losa Saco, "a kind of short-lived festive punk, but with whom we got to play in the Quatre Camins prison" and Las Vegas Crypt, "pure dirty garage, with whom we got to perform at the mythical Magic."
--- Well, for such a nocturnal resume, you've shown up at the Bar very early.
"Before I was totally nocturnal: from dusk onwards. But, since I had my little girl twelve years ago, I see that I can get up early and, well, I don't disintegrate. I've discovered that you can also live by getting up early. Now I almost like it," she laughs, emphasizing the "almost."
Originally from the Guinardó neighborhood, Mar Padilla confesses that she sometimes escapes to walk along her old street: "Calle Segle XX, that being its name and, also, the era in my head. It's that thing of having the contours, the neighbors' apartments, the car workshops, and the trees I looked at so much as a child etched into my heart. When my family and I moved to l'Eixample, I experienced it as a betrayal."
Today, she lives in Sant Antoni with her partner, the musician and agitator Enric Bosser, and her daughter, and has just published her first book, Asalto al Banco Central (Libros del K.O.). It is the first non-fiction work in 40 years about the mysterious assault that kept the city, and the country, on tenterhooks for several days in May 1981, without certain silences about the intricacies surrounding this event ever being broken.
Many paths in one
The parishioner started with a certain contextual advantage: "I am a member of the Padilla Esteban clan. My mother worked at the UAB and was a trade unionist, and my father, a Doctor in History and an expert in the Civil War. My brother, Antonio, is a great novelist and translator, and my sister, Mireia, is an excellent photographer." Surrounded by such a quantity and quality of talents, it is normal that, as a young woman, Mar delved into a great diversity of disciplines: Film Direction, Social Work, Philosophy... But, one day, she discovered Anthropology "and it trapped me: attending classes for subjects like Magic, Science and Religion with Professor Manuel Delgado was amazing. And reading Franz Boas, Mary Douglas or Claude Levi Strauss and understanding the invisible intricacies that make up society, any society, was very, very instructive. And also very liberating."
She alternated those studies and nights of strident sound with a thousand and one jobs: secretary in a messenger company ---"where the best and worst of every home landed"---, door-to-door book sales, catering for film shoots, waitress "in a lot of joints" and, inevitably, DJ and sound technician. "I spent some time at La Boîte, where I saw Jimmy Smith, Lou Bennet, Tete Montoliu, Bill Evans, Elvin Jones or Ray Brown play. And on top of that, they paid me for it!".
"I spent some time at La Boîte, where I saw Jimmy Smith, Lou Bennet, Tete Montoliu, Bill Evans, Elvin Jones or Ray Brown play. And on top of that, they paid me for it!"Then came what the parishioner defines as a brutal turn. "I went to Doctors Without Borders, a total school of life, where you can get a pretty accurate idea, between despair and daily joy, of what the world is like. There I met amazing people, from here or from the many places where I went to work: Colombia, Somalia, Bolivia, South Sudan, Mozambique, Morocco, Cambodia, Kenya, Jordan, the occupied territories in Israel…I made those forever friends, as Los Manolos would say, to the sound of rumba."
She alternated that work informing in situ about innumerable humanitarian catastrophes, with journalistic tasks at El País ---"with colleagues like Pere Rusiñol, Josep María Martí Font or Clara Blanchar, and where I was absurdly happy"--- or the CCCB where she lived "magical moments like getting lost in an amazing exhibition about Ballard's work, life and legacy!".
Nevertheless, Doctors Without Borders remained present in her professional daily life until "with the birth of my little girl, my shield against the pain of others definitively broke. Then I decided to become a freelance, to have freedom and time and, suddenly, hardly any money. But I knew that later, although never, not once, have I come to regret that decision."
The city where Bo Diddley never played
"Many years ago, the great Bo Diddley came here, but finally the concert was canceled because not enough tickets were sold. That night I hated Barcelona with all my might," explains the local, who defines her relationship with the city "as at least, ambivalent. For decades I didn't care at all, but the birth of my daughter, thinking that this was her city, made me observe it and, let's say, reflect on it."
The local defines her relationship with the city "as at least, ambivalent"Hence, he likes that Barcelona known as the Rose of Fire, "a feisty city," which is not a megalopolis, "although many here are convinced that it is the center of the world, and you can walk it from top to bottom in just over two hours." A city almost always sunny, "that offers the possibility of leaving by sea, in addition to having the border relatively close." But from here he abhors "its whiny and complaining vibe. A certain bland and also classist air, of self-importance. I would like it to have more street vitality, a little more joy and flavor." He sips the last remnants of his coffee and orders another to finish waking up. "That's why ---he resumes---, of the music of this city, what I have liked the most by far has been rumba."
And, with the second American coffee freshly served, something lights up in Mar Padilla's eyes, who, smiling, concludes, regarding this Barcelona that is sometimes so complicated to feel:
--- I also like that Don Quixote, the first universal road movie par excellence, made it here!