In a speech after receiving the 14th Cortes Real Isla de Leon Award in San Fernando (Cadiz city), the renowned Catalan singer-songwriter described today’s world as hostile and unsupportive, incapable of acting firmly in the face of “brutal atrocities” such as “the genocide of the Palestinian people.” An artist who symbolizes the power of music as “an instrument of struggle for freedom, democracy, and constitutional values,” the Andalusian city’s arguments for paying tribute to Serrat.

“I grow old in peace, but not resigned (…) we are heartbroken witnesses of brutal atrocities being carried out around us, such as “the genocide that the Palestinian people suffer day after day without any unanimous and forceful responses from governments (…)”, he reflected. He was unscrupulous in criticizing Europe in the face of the climate emergency and considered that the Old Continent has become “a flea market, far removed from the values of enlightenment, humanism, justice, and fraternity.”

Without making direct references, although everyone thought of the denialism reiterated yesterday by Donald Trump at the UN, the Mediterranean singer emphasized that global warming has been caused “by the hand and greed of man” and that for economic reasons, solutions are being postponed.

At the award ceremony at the Royal Theater of the Cortes, he also deplored corruption and the construction of “walls and barbed wire” to stem the waves of migration of people forced to leave their countries “because they are dying of hunger, disease, and wars they didn’t cause.”

jdt/ro/ft