Today is 34 years since a boy spent the afternoon harvesting grapes in Baión, Vilanova de Arousa, with his entire family. He returned home at half past nine at night and went straight to the attic, where he hanged himself. One of his brothers went up there to tell him about dinner. The owner of the Pontevedra Diary from 1990: “A 13-year-old boy commits suicide in Arosa after spending the whole day harvesting grapes.” The association of death with the grape harvest is extremely euphoric. The Enemigos dedicated their famous song September about a boy’s suicide: “It’s already September / and I’m not going to be there. / In September / I don’t plan on harvesting grapes.” Josele Santiago composed it after reading the news of a young man who couldn’t bear the pressure of September exams. Another version says it was because of the fear of showing his grades at home.
When I came across the news in the newspaper archives DiaryI came to believe that I was witnessing the event that inspired one of the best songs in Spanish rock, but I was quickly disabused: the album was recorded in March 1990, six months before Vilanova’s suicide. Of course, a newspaper at that time could take days to report the news, but this seemed exaggerated to me. The lyrics of Los Enemigos leave a beautiful definition of the awareness of death: “Why am I cold / if it’s hot today?” The death of the Vilanova boy could not have inspired Josele Santiago. But since a thread was coming out of the ball, years ago I got Josele Santiago’s number to ask him if he remembered what the news was. He said that he barely remembered anything, that he thought he had read the news in a Galician newspaper and that the inclusion of the grape harvest in the chorus refers more to September than to anything related to the boy. But what caught his attention most of all was the message the boy left at home before tying his neck with a rope: “Go get the bread, I’m not going to go.”
