Glasses with horn-rimmed horns. Black clothes and white sneakers, like his several-day-old beard. There are only a few minutes left before the concert starts and Iván Ferreiro calmly poses for some photos and greets those waiting to see him without rushing. He shows a newlywed smile after a wedding that has led him to appear in the magazine Hello! On his way to 54 years, this Galician went to live in the mountains a while ago and there he has found that balance that sometimes seems impossible. “I have released the best album I have ever made in my life, the tour is going better than ever, they let me record whatever I want. I can’t complain,” he says happily while enjoying the Mediterranean sea breeze at El Balneario, in Malaga, where this Sunday he played with his band in the Atardeceres Larios 2024 cycle.
“What a temperature you have here,” he says before launching into a conversation about football, social networks, holiday apartments, festivals, popularity or the rise of the far right. And where names like Borja Iglesias, Rafa Nadal and Alvise Pérez come up. Things are looking promising.
Ferreiro is immersed in the second year of touring Pop trenchan album released in 2023 and with which he hopes to continue touring in 2025. On Friday he had performed in Madrid, on Saturday in Jaén and on Sunday it was Malaga’s turn. “I have a packed summer,” he admits, looking forward to touring Spain. He participates in cycles, solo concerts and numerous festivals, events that already monopolize the music scene in practically every corner of Spain. “They resemble each other in the same way that they have replaced town concerts, popular festivals, fairs. Before, the same people played in all the cities and now it’s the same. But it’s normal: whoever organizes a festival wants to sell tickets. And if now it’s Arde Bogotá who sells them, then they want to have it on the poster. In their day it was Lori Meyers, Vetusta Morla or myself. Now it’s also La oreja de Van Gogh, who are doing really cool things,” he emphasizes.
“There’s a lot hater “They are not an NGO, but there are gentlemen behind it who want to make money, just like in El Corte Inglés or BBVA. Maybe the difference is that before you knew the name and surname of the person who organised it and now it might be an investment fund. They are the same people who have the tourist apartments and they are taking everything little by little,” he says. The musician is right there on the subject of a very current issue in Malaga (where else?), a city where more than 15,000 people demonstrated last Saturday against the harmful effects of tourist overcrowding and the housing shortage while holiday apartments are multiplying. “They are screwing up the cities,” he says. “Like living in a commercial ground floor. That is a joke, but they make us believe that we are New Yorkers,” he says. “Tourism has been out of our hands for a long time and then people come out saying that the sector is being demonised. They are the same people who get rich in pandemics. And it’s not a matter of right or left, in Vigo we have Abel Caballero with the lights: go shopping at Christmas and you’ll see what a fucking hell it is.”
“I am not into crowds”
Much closer to heaven was the audience that filled the El Balneario venue to the brim for their concert last Sunday. The sun was setting, the waves were breaking against the walls and the breeze was cooling off the intense Malaga heat. The music of the Ferreiro brothers —also their brother, Amaro, was on stage together with Ricky Falkner, Emil Sáez and Xavi Mole— brought a good part of their fans to their feet. Their big hits did so —M, Turnedo, 80s, The sleeper, How I Met Your Mother— but also the songs from the latest album, which he gave a good run-through surrounded by gadgets and electronic gadgets. Other attendees, like the musician Sr. Chinarro, preferred to enjoy the concert sitting down. “In places like this, small, intimate, when I see that people enjoy it, I do too. In larger places it is exciting to see many people singing at the same time, but I am not one for crowds, I prefer rooms with 2,000 people or so,” admits the former leader of Los Piratas.
“There hasn’t been a huge success that has knocked me out. I’ve seen it in other colleagues, who have radically changed their lives in one or two summers. I understand that at 20 years old this happens to you and makes you sleep poorly, causes you problems, sends you to the psychologist.”
No one missed the event, even though the concert coincided in date and time with Spain’s round of 16 match at the European Championship. The musician started singing practically at the same time that Robin Le Normand accidentally scored the goal for the Georgians. “I don’t give a damn about football anymore. I’ve been angry with football for a long time. I used to play when I was little because otherwise on Saturday you had to be alone, although I stopped when they started putting on football.” The Cristal ball. As a sport, it is a very powerful thing, it moves a lot of emotions, but the business that runs it is probably the worst thing that is happening in this country,” says the musician, who despairs at seeing how footballers tiptoe around any controversial issue and barely mobilize in response to anything. He points to Unai Simón’s words after what Mbappé said about the importance of stopping the far right in France: “Except for Borja Iglesias and a couple more, the rest are a gang of rats who collect their money and tell us that we cannot give our opinion. Except for Iglesias, the others kept their mouths shut when it came to Jenni Hermoso. They don’t say anything when they play in Saudi Arabia either.”
And aren’t you afraid of getting into trouble with your opinions? Ferreiro says that whenever he gives his opinion on social media, there is someone who responds telling him not to do it, that they like his music but not to say one thing or another. He already suffered this when he said in an interview on Esquire He said he didn’t understand why Rafa Nadal was in bad shape – physically and psychologically – to play a tournament and that this was a bad example at a time when, finally, mental health has gained visibility: “I said one thing and people insisted I said another. I got hit from all sides.” That’s why he now uses social media, above all, for promotion. He says he prefers not to argue with social media profiles. check blue that all they want is a lot of comments to make money. “I’m not afraid to say what I think, but I don’t think I achieve anything at all. If someone says: ‘we don’t know which side Iván is on in the Israel-Palestine conflict’, well, I don’t need to say it, listening to my music you know which side I’m on and I don’t have to repeat it all the time.”
Then he gets on top. “We thought the internet was going to free us, but the bastards came in. The arrival of the far right in the world of networks and fake news has muddied everything in a very brutal way. What they are achieving is that those of us who are halfway moderate do not want to even enter. I think that the radicals on one side are much more radical than those on the other: those on the left are much more reasonable than those on the right, but the fascists have discovered a way to use the news, the media, Telegram and to say that they are deceiving us all,” he explains. He continues. “We are suffering a series of harassment from a certain place that seeks to keep people quiet, that the news is what they want and they make it up. Alvise has just obtained 800,000 votes when he lies every day, has convictions and is dedicated to harassing, but he will immediately tell you that it is Ana Pastor who is harassing him (although the Supreme Court has recently condemned the politician for interfering in the image of the journalist). Among them, Quiles, the one from beyond… They are getting us not to want to give our opinion,” he insists.
“And what bothers me the most is that phrase ‘and who is that person’. Recently there was an amazing interview with El Drogas, who is a being of light, a very cultured person, one of the great thinkers of this country. He says things that many people don’t like, like those fascist workers, something that blows my mind. Then someone comes out and says: ‘And who is that person?’. Since I don’t know who that person is, I decide that I’m right. Your own ignorance is what justifies that you’re right. It’s the triumph of ignorance,” he concludes. “We’re in a pretty shitty moment,” he says by way of conclusion. “We’re seeing horrible things on the news and we’ve become anesthetized. If there were a series of requirements to go to heaven, of things that you shouldn’t do, we’d probably all be doing them. We’re all going to go to hell, for sure,” he says.
Then he relaxes, takes a breath and looks at the sea. He regains his tone by reviewing the musical career that began at the end of the eighties with Los Piratas and continued in the 2000s, now on his own. A career that, he says, has allowed him to travel looking at the landscape, because it has been a path of ascent carved out slowly. It has been plagued with successes — “and some downturns” — but without a key moment that has upset his life too much. “I have always felt that I am going up. Now I am better than ten years ago, I am more settled. There has not been a big success that hits me hard. I have seen it in other colleagues, who in one or two summers have radically changed their lives. I understand that at 20 years old this happens to you and makes you sleep badly, causes you problems, sends you to the psychologist. Popularity is a horrible thing. Exposure is not pleasant and people deal with it as they can. It has more good things than bad, but if I could make it so that people only know me when I play, I would sign it right now.” What he signed moments later, however, was an autograph. He then received a standing ovation, Spain turned its game around and the beach emptied before he returned home.
You can follow ICON on Facebook, X, Instagramor subscribe here to the Newsletter.
