The final sentence used by Joan Manuel Serrat to say his last goodbye to his excited fans at the National Auditorium in Mexico City included a subliminal message. "I hope we see each other again. In any sky or galaxy, and may the word tomorrow be a sign of life." With this allusion to the future, the Spanish singer-songwriter launched an urgent alert against climate change, an increasingly worrying phenomenon that catches more space in international political and media debates.

“El noi del Poble Sec” always used his verses and chords to make political criticism and demand changes. Although during his first years of musical career the central causes of his songs spoke about the democratic aspirations in Spain or the defense of Catalan language, on the farewell tour "El vicio de cantar 1965-2022" the 78-year-old musician is raising the flag of the fight to preserve a clean and sustainable world.

“It is very painful to see the filth of the world that we are going to leave to our children and grandchildren. We tend to think that we are on time, but honestly, no one is in a hurry to face this”, he stressed in front of the 10,000 Mexican attendees who were paying attention to his speech.

In fact, his alert came before performing the song "Pare", where in a distant 1973 he already warned of the environmental disasters that the future would bring us. Paradoxically, that song was recorded during the year he spent in exile in Mexico, where he sought refuge after fleeing his country for issuing public criticism of the Francoist authorities.

In those distant years, Serrat used to say: “Father, tell me what they have done to the river, that it no longer sings”. And as he confessed to the public in the Mexican capital, he believed that phrase would be outdated some years after. He mistakenly hoped that humans would reconsider before it was too late to protect nature. He was completly wrong.

“The common home is the earth and every day there are more grievances against it. Behind this expression of climate change, which they have made us get used to as a lesser evil, hides a terrible reality that is just around the corner”, he warned with deep concern.

Serrat is taking advantage of his latest live performances to repeat his warning cries. The Catalan musician confirmed that this will be his final farewell to the stage, but that he won't keep away his notebook and guitar. He will continue to write music, and it’s easy to assume that this issue will come up in future compositions.

In the past, he had already presented “Pare” in public with these words: “it is a song that with a lot of bitterness, and also a bit of shame, I want to dedicate to those scoundrels who burn our forests, dirty our waters, poison our food, and enrich themselves with the miseries of others”.

The singer always denounced the passivity with which the natural environment was treated, which was mostly seen as something foreign and distant. “But experience has clearly shown us that we are not one thing and nature another, but that, in the best of cases, we are nature. And that it is nature who welcomes us and who includes us. Loving it means to defend ourselves”, he defended.