Víctor Manuel returned to Lanzarote this Saturday to celebrate his 75 years on stage. The Asturian singer, accompanied by six magnificent musicians, including his son, David San José, filled the Víctor Fernández Gopar "El Salinero" theater in Arrecife.
His show "La Vida en Canciones" is a journey through the songs that have emerged from musicalized poems that commonly speak of rural life, freedom, love and justice, thus entering the genre of protest song or trova that emerged in the 60s-70s, becoming great successes that have taken him through different stages in his long musical career.
Víctor Manuel conquered the large audience that filled the theater and who, during the more than two hours of the concert, hummed many of the songs and in which the Asturian, before or after each interpretation, finished them by telling how and why he had written them. He took a tour of some of the songs with which he began his career, marked in its beginnings by the censorship of the Franco regime, some of them even led him to exile. He told several anecdotes enriching the concert and told, among other things, what happened to him the second time he participated in the "Festival del Atlántico" held in Puerto de la Cruz in Tenerife in the 1970s with the song "El Cobarde". A song that the jury and the audience liked very much, but "not the Canarian authorities who considered the theme as an anti-military theme." Initially the song was the winner but the vote was repeated and another won. In addition, he said that he was about to be arrested but thanks to Elfidio Alonso, who was a member of the jury, he managed to avoid it.
This and many other anecdotes were shared by the singer during the concert where songs as well known as El Abuelo Víctor, La Romería, Nada sabe tan dulce como su boca, Solo pienso en ti, Un corazón tendido al sol or Asturias, among many others, were played. The two hours of concert were not enough for the attendees and at the time of the farewell they asked for more, a request that Víctor Manuel kindly complied with, performing several encores, even going down from the stage to be close to his audience who hugged him and asked for a photograph.