Mediterráneo

The song Mediterráneo is not just a track, but a hug to the sea that Serrat carries within. It is not hard to understand why, if one listens to how the guitar’s rhythm sways like the waves and the voice breaks when naming that Mediterranean that saw him born. The lyrics do not speak of just any place: it is an intimate map where each verse traces the path from his childhood in Barcelona to the coasts that marked him. What is curious is that, although the title evokes a landscape, the song was born far from there. As Serrat himself told in an interview with El País in 2014, he composed it during his exile in Mexico, in those days of nostalgia when the sea became a ghost of what he could no longer touch.

Recorded in 1971 for the album of the same name, the song was woven between August and November of that year, as Serrat traveled through Spain. It was not a methodical studio job: the entire record emerged from that pilgrimage, as if each place gave him a piece of the melody. The track, which lasts just over three minutes, became an anthem without intending to. In 2004, the program Nuestra mejor canción from Televisión Española chose it as the Spanish public’s favorite. The magazine Rolling Stone named it in 2010 as the best of Spanish pop, and in 2019, singer Alba Reche performed it in the same space, reaffirming its place in collective memory. But beyond the awards, what makes Mediterráneo special is how Serrat makes the listener feel the water on their skin, even if they have never seen the sea.