Valeria Castro, singer: “Not even my mother had realized that it was so bad” | Culture | EUROtoday

Valeria Castro is having a cheerful afternoon. He has simply activated Spotify’s annual statistics, people who half of humanity shares as of late on Instagram, and the platform has attributed an emotional-music-loving age to him of 80 years. And she, a Taurus of 99, accustomed to having the sambenito of outdated man, It isn’t prepared to be offended by the designs of machines or algorithms. “This is what happens to me for continuing to listen to Silvana Estrada and Sílvia Pérez Cruz so much,” she causes, resigned. And it breaks.

Indeed, the information is that the writer of warrior, deal with your self, loneliness o it needs to be simpler (sure, she is so modest that she writes all her titles in decrease case) she has recovered her humor, her humor and even her capability for self-parody. In the course of the dialog, an extended hour of confessions and a few sweets in a pleasant cafeteria in Chamberí, the grins greater than subdue the tears, which typically feign however don’t even discover sufficient causes to movement. And this give up of unhappiness had not occurred since that fateful October 13 when the singer-songwriter from La Palma starred in an unattractive efficiency in Operation Triumphwith an agonized voice that didn’t appear to be his personal, and dozens of nameless vigilantes proceeded to a merciless stoning course of on social networks. Three days later, the artist introduced in a press release “a small pause on this path to recover physically and mentally.”

“I faced a family grief in the summer [la muerte de su abuela] and a period of a lot of mental noise. “No one teaches you how to navigate a world of work that is so strange and exposed, so capitalist and prone to vertigo,” she reflects now after these seven weeks of retreat (she prefers to talk about “sick leave,” as the medical reports certify). “We live in a world in which external noise is so aggressive that therapy becomes as necessary as your family doctor. And my psychologist explained to me that my wounds were no longer healed just with the small plasters that I had been putting on myself until then…”

Castro has recovered his lucid and affable tone, his loquacity and his proverbial bonhomie, although he does not feel like remembering in all the details that television Black Monday, preceded by a performance at the Gran Teatro Falla in Cádiz in which an attendee wrote, ruefully, to this journalist: “She doesn’t look like her. Do you have any idea if something is wrong with her?” “On TV day I already knew the reality that lived in my head,” summarizes the artist. “And from then on I confronted not a lot crying as vacancy. We wrote the assertion at my representatives’ home and I understood how fortunate I used to be to have a human crew that not solely works with me, however has taken care of me like a glass.”

That same morning, Valeria deleted all the social networks from her cell phone (“now I have reinstalled them, but I am entering little by little”), canceled trips, postponed a handful of concerts and began a healing process that today reaches its culmination: the Mar de Vigo auditorium will attend her happy reintegration into the maelstrom this Monday. “On the day of the announcement I reluctantly agreed to stop,” this three-time Latin Grammy candidate, author of the central song of The 47 and recent Ondas Award. “Since that very same Thursday I’ve not stopped mentally visualizing my return on a regular basis. Along the way in which I’ve understood that I’ve gone on many phases out of maximum self-demand, and that can’t be. I had many accrued psychological vices. Not the others, as a result of I’m very wholesome, however I ended up incurring in an nearly entrepreneurial dynamic, in that creative ambition of desirous to be all over the place. After having restricted the time of my life, now I come out extra human from all of this.”

He thought that with the rest, the pause and the disconnection he would start writing songs and more songs, but what the hell. At first I had enough to bear the discomfort. Then came the most complicated part: rediscovering her very personal and unmistakable vocal performance, so fragile, beautiful and focused on the tremolo. “It has taken me a very long time to hearken to myself and suppose that my music has worth. And I’ve sung loads, loads at house. I assume the neighbors are fed up!” More laughter.

She hasn’t been alone. The messages of affection between professional colleagues were so overwhelming that she suspected that the mockery and jokes, the merciless mockery, would continue on the networks. It didn’t surprise him either: she is sweet, but not candid. “I am a child of immigration and I have known hatred, but I refuse to accept that the world is doomed to it.” She has been cared for, pampered, and even invited home by her friend María Rozalén, a companion in singing-songwriter fatigues and a trained psychologist. And she has become a regular student of the Argentine Patricia Ferro, a singing teacher and music therapist, a petite and temperamental woman who has also had among her pupils illustrious figures of Spanish pop-rock such as Pucho (Vetusta Morla) or Antonio García, the leader of Arde Bogotá.

Patricia has been “the decisive piece in healing the shortcomings”, the first to make him understand that an artist writes about sadness because he has already experienced it. AND in the body after all (March 2025), his beautiful and heartfelt second LP, already contained a lot of concentrated pain, although in spring almost no one realized it.

– Not even in your closest environment?

– Not even. The other day my mother, who is also a family doctor, told me this. “Daughter, I ended to hearken to the album extra rigorously. I hadn’t even realized that you just have been so unhealthy!”

The good thing about the falls, in short, is the renewed momentum of reactivation. The pandemic catastrophe did not make us come out better, Valeria assumes, but she does feel more established and secure now, more willing to “contribute a bit gentle, even when she isn’t the savior of the world or something.” Embarrassed to have deserved so much attention and affection, committed that her case “can serve as a mirror for other people to undertake a therapeutic process.” And even determined that the public powers sink their teeth into the dilemma of mental health once and for all. “We have to have a look at it very critically. Therapy can’t be a privilege. It should be included in public well being techniques and prejudices should be overcome. It is an issue that impacts us all.”

– And you really haven’t written any new songs in the last two months?

– Well, for a week yes, although almost as a therapeutic exercise. Many have started to appear, but I haven’t reviewed them yet and I don’t know if any of them will work or if they will all stay in the drawer. Of course: I have confirmed that communicating through songs is my authentic mother tongue. Now, while you and I talk, it’s as if I were expressing myself in a second language, as if we were speaking in English…

On the same day of this coffee, that office that takes care of Valeria Castro “like a crystal” introduced that the Canarian would undertake probably the most huge concert events of her profession in 2026, in separate pavilions in Madrid (January 9), Tenerife (March 21), Gran Canaria (July 26) and the Palau Sant Jordi in Barcelona, ​​on October 30. They shall be 4 splendid events to hearken to Valeria on the prime of her lungs, in her mom tongue.