Raphael and Spanish Popular Song: A Master Entertainer and/or Music for Maids

Raphael, a global multimedia superstar, began his professional singing career in 1960 and has subsequently taken the lead role in numerous cinematic star vehicles, hosted his own television shows and starred in the Spanish version of the Jekyll and Hyde stage musical. His initial rise to fame was inextricably linked with his ability to simultaneously embody tradition and modernity in his public persona, music and performance style. He remains a household name in Spain and his television specials on Christmas Eve have become as traditional and commented upon as the King’s address to the nation. Although Raphael is undeniably an institution at home, he is too contested a figure to acquire the status of a national treasure. In the words of Luz Sánchez-Mellado:

Pruebe a decir estas frases en público. Yo soy aquél. Qué sabe nadie. En carne viva. Escándalo. Seguro que alguien las completa con una estrofa sepultada en su inconsciente. Como la magdalena de Proust. Como el perro de Pavlov. Cada una de las 300 canciones del repertorio de Raphael desencadena una respuesta automática en el imaginario de tres generaciones de españoles. Con su nombre pasa igual. ¿Raphael? “Un artistazo.” “Un histrión.” “Un facha.” “El precursor del glam.” “Una estrella.” “Amanerado.” “Único.” La reacción espontánea de un puñado de encuestados lo constata. Todos tienen una opinión sobre él.

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My intention in this article is to contextuy intention in this article is to contextualise and explain these complex and often contradictory responses which, I will argue, stem largely from the fact that Raphael embodies a form of commoditised mass culture which came to the fore in Spain during the 1960s when, in Tatjana Pavlović’s memorable phrase, the Franco “regime’s self-justification ceased to be metaphysical and became more frankly material” (1). It is designed to be read as a socio-historical companion piece to the first academic study dedicated to Raphael in which I locate him, both culturally and aesthetically, within the nascent field of Spanish popular music studies (Wheeler).

Especially following his marriage to aristocrat Natalia Figueroa in 1972, Raphael had close personal and political ties with the Francoist elite and he provides a particularly blatant example of how celebrities courted and were courted by the dictatorial regime. In interviews as in his lyrics, he sought to avoid political commentary but, when pushed, he made his sentiments if not his words clear:

¿Si creo que existen aquí problemas políticos? ¡Ahí, sí que me has dado en la médula: de eso sí que no entiendo nada! Y no es pose: soy apolítico por completo, por completo. No sé qué es socialismo, no sé qué es . . . ¿qué más cosas hay? . . . pues comunismo . . . ¿qué más cosas hay?, hay más cosas . . . democracia y rinosincracia, ¡ja, ja, ja! Te juro que no entiendo nada. Ni siquiera sé lo que quieren decir estas palabras . . . Yo admiro y adoro con locura al Generalísimo Franco, le quiero muchísimo, con amor profundo. Me produjo un respeto imponente . . . Ahora, si de pronto, viene el rey Juan Carlos o . . . y viene él y se porta tal como Franco, para mí merecerá los mismos respetos, igual como se merecía mis respetos por lo bien que se ha portado con el pueblo americano Kennedy, ¿me entiendes?

(Raphael cited in Porcel, “Raphael” 23)

During the 1960s and early 1970s, this led many to assume that he was an opportunist whose fame would be transitory. Raphael is a fascinating case-study in that he helps contextualise the distrust of popular culture in the Spanish academy, an unsatisfactory state of affairs of which he is both a victim and perpetrator. An (in)conspicuous absence of scholarly attention is, I will suggest, symptomatic of a broader tendency characterised by Jo Labanyi in the following terms: “critical writing on modern Spanish culture, by largely limiting itself to the study of ‘high culture’ (even when the texts studied are non-canonical), has systematically made invisible—ghostly—whole areas of culture which are...