Joaquín Sabina’s last “good night” thrills Madrid and confirms his final farewell to the stage

Nobody likes goodbyes, but everyone wants to be able to say “I was there”. That is the feeling that dominated this Sunday the Movistar Arena in Madrid, where Joaquín Sabina offered what he himself announced as the last concert of his life. A closing as emotional as it was historic, which left thousands of fans in tears, raised cell phones and a shared feeling of privilege and loss.

Sabina himself confirmed it bluntly: “This concert in Madrid is the last of my life and therefore it is the most important, because it is the one I will remember”. The phrase fell on the audience like a sweet and tragic sledgehammer at the same time, a reminder that the Hola y adiós tour no longer had room for more “hola’s”. “Just goodbye,” the artist added, to the laments of the audience.

Madrid, the only possible place for the end

The closing could not be anywhere else. Madrid, the city that Sabina helped to build in the collective imagination with his songs, received him with a long and closed ovation, aware that he was attending the end of an era. That’s why opening the night with Yo me bajo en Atocha had a special meaning: a farewell that started at home.

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This first wink was followed by Lágrimas de mármol, Lo niego todo, Mentiras piadosas and Ahora que….. Visibly moved, Sabina thanked the audience for their presence: “Without you the songs do not exist”. And he summed up in one sentence what many felt: “How my songs have managed in a mysterious way to sneak into the emotional memory of several generations”.

A legacy that belongs to all of us

Sabina knows it: his lyrics have been so long intertwined with popular speech that they are already part of the language. That night he sang for the last time verses that no longer belong only to him, but to a whole country: “I don’t want Sunday afternoons”, “May the end of the world catch you dancing”. And yet, his audience sang them as if it were the first time.

One of the most moving moments of the first part of the concert came with Calle Melancolía, presented by Sabina himself as the second song he wrote more than 40 years ago. It sounded so current, so alive, that it seemed newly composed.

“19 Days and 500 Nights”: the public forgets the farewell for a moment.

The band and Sabina kept the energy at a very high level throughout more than two hours of music. 19 días y 500 noches proved once again why it is a cross-cultural anthem: Madrid danced to it as if this goodbye did not exist.

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Then came ¿Quién me ha robado el mes de abril? and Más de cien mentiras, during which Sabina introduced, one by one, the musicians who have accompanied him for so many years: “We are not just the ones you see on stage,” he said, in a gesture of gratitude to his entire musical family.

A break to dream with other voices

The artist explained one of his recurring fantasies in his concerts: “When I finished a sweet, loving song, I thought about how it would look on the lips of a woman…”, he said before giving way to Mara Barros, who performed Camas vacías. And he added: “When I came up with a rock and roll song… I thought about how it would sound in the voice of a real rocker”, which led Jaime Asúa to defend Pacto entre caballeros (Gentlemen’s agreement).

“Peces de ciudad” and a remembrance of Chavela Vargas

Back on stage, Sabina gave one of the most emotional moments of the night when he sang Peces de ciudad: “Todos los que vivimos en Madrid somos Peces de ciudad” (All of us who live in Madrid are city fish), he said, drawing shouts and applause.

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And he continued with an anecdote that is the history of Spanish music: “One night, many years ago, walking through Madrid with Chavela Vargas, she told me that she lived on the Boulevard of Broken Dreams. I thought that deserved a song…”. The audience burst into a standing ovation even before El boulevard de los sueños rotos was played.

“Y sin embargo”: homage to the song that inspired it.

Before performing Y sin embargo, Sabina recalled his adolescence: “When I was a teenager something played on my mother’s radio. It was the song ‘Y sin embargo te quiero’. Whenever I sing it I like to pay homage to it…”. Mara Barros interpreted it with a power that left the audience in silence before the applause.

The final section was an emotional whirlwind: Noches de boda, Y nos dieron las diez, where Sabina dropped a hopeful but improbable “Ojalá, ojalá”, and a minimal pause before the final climax. “La canción más hermosa del mundo”, in the voice of Antonio García de Diego, opened the last block, followed by Tan joven y tan viejo, with the whole venue singing at the top of their lungs.

The end came with Contigo, which left Mara Barros visibly moved, and with the electricity of Princesa, the definitive closing of an unrepeatable career. As the stage melted into black, Sabina pronounced his last words on stage: “Good night, Madrid. Thank you, see you always”.