Don’t be too upset if I tell you what happened 25 years since ‘The Slit in Your Skirt’‘. Yes, that catchy song that everyone loved and that closed those parties in style to which we went ‘dressed up’ with wide skate shoes and Levi’s 501. It was the great song of 1998, the year in which David and José Muñoz, Estopa, burst into Spanish music paying homage to Camarón or Los Chicos. And they claimed it: they sold two million records and their songs sounded everywhere. They sounded so much (so much, so much, so much…) that they, at some point, got tired of some of them. “There was a time,” José begins, “when we caught him a little bit of mania for ‘The Slit in Your Skirt’. Of course, from singing it so much… We stopped being the Estopa to be ‘Los de la Roja’, so there was a time when it screwed us.” “But it’s stupid. When we remove it from the repertoire the truth is… we have to admit it! We were cool,” David clarifies.

Both approaching 50 years old, they say that evidently they have changed over time because, they say, “It would be ridiculous to write topics about ‘petas’ or liters“. So in substance yes, but not in form. Because, in fact, with ‘Estopia‘, the album with 12 unreleased songs with which they celebrate their silver anniversary in music, they want to pay tribute to that first album. “And no ballads or wafers. energetic songs. Battery chargers”, they say. ‘Very Estopa’ songs.

You would have to search a lot to find a Spanish group that the public has so much affection for. Perhaps because they make themselves loved, through humility and spontaneity. They’re not about anything, they’re about them. And talking to David and José (it’s not a myth nor do they play a role, I promise) is like talking to two lifelong colleagues. What if that’s part of the secret to your success? Well, they don’t know and they justify “what’s theirs” as chance, luck… “or because it’s gone wrong.”

As they do, from time to time, accompany an orchestra that they hear cover their songs when they are in front of them. In the last year, they have caught him about three times so, in the end, the thing has ended up becoming a legend that they want it to stop growing: “The other day I went to a bar,” David begins, “and the guy told me from the orchestra: ‘Come on, get up and sing one’… and no. The times we have done it has been in our town, on a friend’s birthday…”. “And at the April Fair,” José says, “because he intervened. Because we were a little ‘dad’“.

Surely much more content than in Seville will go to collect the Medal for Fine Arts that this year the Ministry of Culture has awarded them. I ask them if an award like this rejuvenates or ages them and they answer that they don’t know: “We don’t really know what it means. It must be good, because everyone congratulates us and, well, we’re excited, but our mother is. .. Had to take Diazepam because she was very nervous, she attacked herself.

Normal. She must be cool being the mother of a duo that sells thousands and thousands of tickets within minutes of putting them on sale. Because yes, they say that without thinking much about this commemorative tour they are going to change the WiZink and the Palau Sant Jordi for the Metropolitano and the Olimpic de Barcelona: “Let’s hope we don’t screw it up“, they predict to themselves.

And so, as if time had passed for them, they have reached 2023 in the same way they started in 1998: with humility, having fun, enjoying and feeling lucky for doing what they do.

And, if you run into David or José in a bar, a couple of pieces of advice: if they are not together, don’t ask them.”Where is your brother?“(“Yes, although it may surprise people, we are not always together”) or What is your favorite color (“What the fuck is that question? Who cares what my favorite color is!”), because they hate it.