This is not the story of a comeback, of a return to the stage. This is the portrait of a friendship, of a collective trauma, of a recovery process yet to be completed. This is the story of four friends from Baeza who are still alive.

In August 2016 the life of José, Pope, Jaime and Juancabetter known as Supersubmarine, it is over as they, their families and all their followers knew it. The band was returning from a performance at a festival in Cullera when they suffered a brutal traffic accident. It occurred at kilometer 168 of the N-322 highway. The gray Seat Alhambra in which the group was traveling collided with a white Mercedes Sprinter in a front-to-side collision. The Supersubmarina vehicle ended up crashing on the side of the ditch. “After the accident a beep remains, a beep that does not go away. You are sleeping and you keep hearing it. Only those who lived through it know,” explains Pope (drummer and the person he was driving at the time).

Eight years have passed and it’s time to break silences (and talk about fears) to continue moving forward, to reinvent ourselves. This Thursday it goes on sale ‘Something that serves as light’, the book where (in the words of journalist Fernando Navarro) they tell what happened after the accident and how they are still recovering from their injuries (those that can be seen and those that cannot be seen). At the Pavón Theater in Madrid they were applauded by more than 600 people for a few very emotional minutes. “We are on stage and we are together, I don’t want tears, we are celebrating life“Juanca stated at the beginning of the event.

After the presentation of the book, laSexta sits down with the bandwith “the best group of friends you can have” (in the words of ‘Chino’, the singer).

Ask: Eight years after the accident you have returned to public spaces. How has the reunion with the media and followers continued? How are you feeling?

Jaime (guitarist): “It’s been a long time without facing something like this. We were nervous before going on stage. It’s more difficult than giving a concert because there you know what you are going to do. But very good, very happy.”

Pope (bassist): “We have answered many unanswered questions. There is a certain liberation in that aspect. People already know the moment that Supersubmarina is going through right now.”

Ask: During the recovery it was difficult to reach you. Little or nothing was known about your process. Why did you choose to tell the story in a book? What made you trust Fernando for that task?

Juanca (drummer): “We had the northern wall, like in Winterfell. It was something natural, something that we felt was the right decision. We did a first interview with Fernando that was going to be for the media, but when he saw our reality he understood everything there was. behind and proposed the book to us. We felt a lot of honesty, I wanted to tell our story well“.

Ask: Supersubmarina has undergone an individual recovery process and another collective process. Eight years of recovery since 2016, and in the middle of that evolution, in 2020, a pandemic arrives. How did it affect you? Did it slow your recovery?

Juanca: “We had stopped, we had come from a radical stoppage, something that had been a significant trauma for us. Supersubmarina was already in ‘stanby’, so it was not so traumatic for us. We were already stopped, that was where we came from. That Yes, it is obvious that many people suffered, it was a pandemic. But it did not affect the work project.”

Ask: Jaime and Pope suffered emotional injuries, symptoms of depression. in your words Jaime, “you became the biggest son of a bitch in the world” during recovery. Did that lack of communication further aggravate the recovery process?

(Jaime has undergone more than 40 operations to save his leg. The trips to the operating room and the pain became part of his routine. “Now I can walk well, in fact I have a leg.” During his recovery, the guitarist also suffered severe depression that made him think about suicide)

James: I have always been a fairly introverted person. It was a very hard time for many people, it was very hard and unfortunately many people died; But for me it was a relief. The world is starting to go a little at my pace, and my pace was very slow. My life in 2020 was already at a standstill and I felt in tune with the world.

Pope: “For me it was also a liberation. My partner was working in Seville and thanks to teleworking he was able to come to Baeza. That was good for me, it was my true liberation.”

José, better known as ‘Chino’ suffered the most severe injuries in the traffic accident. His recovery has been amazing and he has been breaking medical prognoses over the years. However, he is the only one who cannot remember anything about the tragedy or the eight years before the accident. His memory is a black hole, The group’s composer doesn’t remember what it was like to get on stage.

Ask: José, what was it like to rediscover the group’s songs? What did you think of the lyrics when you first discovered them? Look, more than one was quite intense…

José: “I liked some more than others… (smiles) I am very proud of my work. It is very good”

James: “There is something curious in all this. When you write a song you do it thinking about someone in particular. Then the song reaches the people and that person makes it their own. Many of our songs for ourselves have changed their meaning. Now we see a halo of hope for Supersubmarina in many of the lyrics. That is something magical about music, that is wonderful.”

During the talk with laSexta, those from Baeza also have time to remember the ‘Cágarrut’, the first amplifier the group had. It belonged to Pope and he was present at the beginning of the group (as another member). After the accident, Pope kept it for many years in a closet at home. One day he took him out of his sleep and played the chords of LN Granada in the living room. It was the first time that Pope returned to play a song by his band after the accident.

Ask: What happened to ‘Cagarrut’, the holy grail of Supersubmarina? Who has it?

Pope: “Today Andrés, José’s nephew, has it. He wants to use it for a musical project that he wants to undertake. Let’s hope that it means the same to him as it has to us. He has the talisman that can make everything rise upwards “

Fernando Navarro (author of the book): “The story of ‘Cágarrut’ is told in the book. They told it to me at the last dinner we had together in Baeza. That’s when I realized that I had to be another protagonist of the book ‘Now let it serve as a light'”

José: “It is pronounced ‘Cágarrut’, remember that it is an esdrújula. Did you put it correctly in the book?” (He corrects ‘Chino’ quickly in the chat. It’s something important, we’re talking about the band’s holy grail.)

Ask: Supersubmarina is still alive, its music never left. After the book and the reissue of the group’s demo (which goes on sale next week), what is the short-medium term plan? What do you want to do?

José: “The future is continue recovering and see if we can record an album. Is that”.

Juanca: “We are going to continue contributing things outside of what is the development of a normal band (concerts, album release and so on). The objective is to row and give people what they expect. We want to continue moving forward and contribute things to the scene musical”.

And in the meantime, health and (lots of) lots of friendship.

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