Sonia Barba: The surprise of developing creatively

He accepts that the radio continues to play, "as long as it's not football, politics or socialites fighting to see who is the most ingenious of all" and he leans on the bar to order a vermouth and accept a drink from another customer cigarette, even after twenty years without the vice. "Fortunately, I am not addicted to enjoying the pleasure of smoking from time to time," he points out.

“I hate telling myself, I can't stand it, it makes me very sad to have to do it”, explains the poet, performer and tireless cultural agitator, Sonia Barba, creator of initiatives such as the notable Poetic Brothel, before starting to recall what, for She was one of the best meetings when she came to Barcelona, ​​fifteen years ago now and after having lived in Madrid: she met the journalist and editor Alfred Crespo with whom a few code words were enough to get to know and recognize each other. "I thanked heaven and regained my faith in this strange world in which people spend hours talking about themselves, as if it were of enormous importance" and smiles with a smile that has shone through a thousand nights of a thousand colors and a thousand other shades.

“The highlight of my career is that it exists –he continues–, that one can speak of a career, that is the most significant thing for me. In other words, things are going so little in favor of being able to develop creatively, that the fact of doing it, of continuing to do it, is surprising”, and he sips a brief sip of his vermouth to leave a space between the words that explain the artist in terms of passion and, very importantly, team play: “I am extremely grateful to the people who surround me and who accompany me through all of this. You catch me not really wanting to talk about the sorrows we carry, due to the fact that we are women, all of us who decide to listen to our creative drive, but in a country where culture is a kind of sewer rat destined to survive under whatever conditions are inflicted on it, what can I tell you that hasn't already been said a thousand and one times?"

— Really, the mere fact of getting ahead is already a reason for pride.

— I'm still not more proud of one thing than another. I value each one of them because they have allowed me to move on to the next one.

Jewellery in progress

Sonia Barba chains together moments that, for her, have had a transcendental value and that, in fact, have taken her from one point to another like a game of mirrors reflecting a beam of light in different trajectories. A game that begins “at the time when at school I began to do theater in extracurricular activities, thus avoiding the regional dance classes that my mother wanted me to sign up for,” he laughs. Later, my commitment to live in Madrid, the purchase of a battery with my first salary, working with Murki López, Guillermo Monge, Ernesto González, Iñigo Munster, Balma and Eva from Las Solex, Olafa Ladousse, Carlos G. de Marcos and a Lots of musicians and artists going through the independent music distributor Comforte in the early 1990s.” From there he put on "a very underground cabaret show and performed in dissident rooms inhabited by fantastic beings like the artist Andrés Senra."

The remembrance of vital turning points now goes through "the recording of Somos Gente with my first group, Los Llamados Perdidos, produced by Justo Bagüeste and Javier Almendral." And he continues: "the fact of putting myself in charge of the Poetic Brothel, in Barcelona, ​​thanks to Kiely Sweatt, the edition of my first collection of poems Dear Pretty Baby, meeting the director, actor and dancer Alberto Velasco..."; and concludes: “Everything is beads in a still unfinished costume jewelery necklace”.

— So far, what you have done professionally and artistically. And personally?

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— On a more personal level, I would highlight coming to Barcelona and the decision to become a mother, which marked a before and after of absolutely everything.

The life that excites

Currently focused on finding a festival in which to premiere her next piece of scenic experimentation, on finishing her third collection of poems and on carrying out the training cycles that she has begun to offer through the Poetic Brothel, Sonia Barba confesses that she is getting into “headlong into the world of audiovisuals” to interpret powerful characters. In this sense, she extends a request: "please, people who write fiction, make scripts in which women over forty are real and have weight beyond being the mother of the protagonist."

In addition to all these projects, for this adopted Barcelonan it is a priority to continue developing and learning: “Keep dancing, discovering music, authors, people who look out at the world from the margins and get excited about life”.

—And Barcelona? Does it excite you?

“I think I began to love her unconditionally after the attacks on La Rambla”, she replies, before recalling a couple of aspects that she did not like: “When I arrived in Barcelona, ​​she killed me every time I went to get books from the Library and all the ones I wanted to read were only in Catalan”. She does a visual sweep of the bar and adds: "And the fact that they don't put a lid on the drinks in the bars still hurts my soul!", she exclaims.

—Speaking of tapas, would you like to eat something? rations? Menu?

—If the menu includes a dish without meat and that isn't just a poorly made salad, then menu—, he answers with a complicit smile.