“I don’t know if I can talk about it yet,” says Blanca Paloma (Elche, 37 years old) about the project she has underway, besides the concert tour that will take her to Málaga this Friday. But immediately after, she sums it up, with a look of excitement, as “a creative retreat.” In her hands, she holds a CD with her first album, Trenza mía, whose booklet she will play with during the conversation. She represented Spain in Eurovision in 2023 with the song Ea, ea and three years later she has signed a manifesto to boycott that festival due to the presence of Israel.
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Question. You started by telling me something you shouldn’t, about that creative retreat you are in. But it’s not the first one you’ve done…
Answer. For this album I went to a monastery for a week and went to another one just before the Benidorm Fest. I conceived it as a kind of detox from screens, from everything in general, and also a reconnection with oneself. Time is very productive when you are outside the city’s machinery.
Q. You represented us in Eurovision with a lullaby and then took a break. But for those who don’t know you and don’t know that you studied Fine Arts, for example, how would you define yourself?
A. At this moment I suppose I consider myself a creator. The only thing that has changed all this time is that before I used all my creative tools to tell other people’s stories, and now I tell mine. I like to be a bit of a heart-pincher. I remember that when I presented myself at the Benidorm Fest I said that when they asked me what I wanted to convey to the viewer. The gesture of pinching is something I like, and at the same time it wakes you up.
Q. Let’s talk about Trenza mía. You come without it. What does it symbolize?
A. If there was one thing I was clear about this album it was the name, long before the songs. It is the braid I cut off 14 years ago, a gesture that was somehow a declaration of intent with which I wanted to make an exercise of detachment. Cutting off a part of me and becoming the Blanca Paloma I am now. It is stepping forward on stage, leaving fears and insecurities behind. That’s why the day I presented the album, which was also my birthday, I asked the makeup artist to leave me some scissors, because I felt it was a way to start this stage as a blank canvas. I come from a stage in which many things have happened in a very short time, a lot of exposure with Eurovision, and it’s not because I want to erase what came before, it will always be there as part of the path, but it is presenting myself beyond that. This has been like going back to the music room.
Q. Please explain that to me.
A. Literally it is a room that was in my house. We didn’t have a playroom, but my siblings and I grew up singing and dancing. My father played the guitar, my mother sang and I think I learned music playing in that room. My training is in Fine Arts, in Scenography and Costume. I like to think how in French or English, to say you play music is play, or jouer, which means to play.
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Q. You say you are not nostalgic at all, that you are very much about carpe diem.
A. I am more and more about the present. There is a poem on the album that I did not write, but that seemed very important to me to include, because I composed this album crossed by the massacre in Gaza. I wanted to compose a song that referred to that, but I couldn’t find the right point. I came across a poem by a Palestinian poet named Fadwa Tuqan and I asked a friend of mine, who is a Palestinian exile, to recite it to me. All proceeds from the physical and digital album with that poem and the song that closes it will go to an association that helps children in Gaza.
Q. Three record labels in three years. You said in an interview that a record contract is like a marriage. Is the third husband the best you’ve had?
A. I think you have to marry every day, you can’t take anything for granted.
Q. You’ve already told me what you see when you look in the mirror. What other mirrors do you look into? Is there someone you would like to resemble?
A. I have it very clear: Silvia Pérez Cruz. The first time I saw her perform live I thought: “If one day I release an album or dedicate myself to music in some way, I would love to do it like that.”
Q. Tell me about your tour.
A. It’s the first one and it doesn’t last long, it’s quite concentrated. I’ve had two dates, which were Valladolid and Badajoz, and I’m very happy. In Valladolid the first date sold out and they offered me to do one the next day and it sold out again. And something similar happened in Badajoz. It was very sad, but I thought of going out to a balcony and singing to the people who had stayed outside before the concert started.
Q. Why do you consider it sad?
A. Because people who had decided to spend their afternoon coming to see you couldn’t get in. That’s why I did it, as a thank you, and it was very funny because that video went very viral. But even so, even having these two very recent experiences that went very well, I have that fear of the abyss, because there are many cities where I have never sung. I don’t know if there is an audience there for my music. I’m eager to find out.
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