A magical love affair with music
My magical love affair with her music perhaps began with El amor del capitán Brando. Yet, I had never seen her perform live—not even during her legendary tours with Sabina, Serrat, Ríos, and her partner of over fifty years, Víctor Manuel. Yesterday, at the Movistar Arena in Madrid, her son David was on keyboards—a prodigy of calm, inspiration, and music. And handsome, of course. Ana Belén is a standard-bearer for generations: hers, mine, those that came after, and even some before. She is a breath of fresh air in a country that can often feel grey and fusty, to whom she knew how to say, “there are possibilities and there is joy.”
Special guests and timeless anthems
One of those who joined her on stage yesterday was Miguel Poveda, that prodigy of song discovered by Bigas Luna. They sang a recent Víctor Manuel song about humidity and bones. Others came up too—this is not a chronicle or a critique, hence no full list—but the emotion and thrill of seeing and hearing Miguel Ríos sing España camisa blanca de mi esperanza, another Víctor masterpiece, with Ana utterly devoted to its beauty, remains. The audience was varied, intergenerational, ‘transversal’ as they say now, but more than that. Almost no one stood until the very end, except for me, during the encores and, above all, during La Puerta de Alcalá—what a beautiful hymn to history and liberty.
A personal connection and a therapeutic night
Both she and her partner Víctor, who returned to the stage for this song to sing it passionately together, have gifted us so much calm and beauty. The first time I saw her in person was in Valdoviño, at the home of her eternal agent, Clara Heyman, who hosted her on holiday in 1980. Ana would wake up more than awake and offer you a ‘good morning’ smile before breakfast. In 2019, at the Teatro Real, I asked Clara to reintroduce me so I could give Ana some poems. It was done; they were filming a beautiful documentary about her life directed by Méndez Leite. Clara passed away recently, and not long before, we chatted on the terrace of the Teatro Abadía with some of her clients, Carlos Hipólito and Charo López. “I stay in this business for them; they make me happy,” she told me after an intimate concert by María Lavalle and Hipólito. She was a great actress and an excellent person.
Yesterday’s concert was also intimate, for thousands of followers who used their mobile phone torches instead of lighters during the unsolicited encores. The concert on 23 December 2025 will always be remembered, and not just because, as she said and thanked us for, we left “lambs, seafood, and cured meats for today’s dinner” to go and listen to her, the queen of our yearnings. I believe I’ve seen almost all her films. Vicente Aranda drew out peculiar and bossy facets from her in Libertarias as an anarchist troop leader—what a delight.
Deep down, I went to yesterday’s concert as therapy, because I was losing Ana, seeing her fade into the past due to a physical resemblance to a lost and wicked relative I did not want to associate her with. The therapy worked, and the relative, along with that association, has been banished to hell forever. Ana is so much more than that—a different kind of physical beauty, a candour that always offers shelter through her lyrics. She is an eternity of poetry, and I hope she remains so for many years to come. And happy holidays.
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