Making a song a classic is within the reach of very few, it’s identify a group with a theme. Without a doubt, a hymn that identifies each follower with a time, a place, a story, a date… And so thirty-three years have passed in which every April 20 we remember to the group from Valladolid Celtas Cortos, who with this song defended more than a generation of experiences and moments. Without a doubt April 20 It’s more than just a song.
A date, April 20, 1990, forever linked to Celtic Courts. And a letter, the most famous in Spanish music, which didn’t really exist: “it was not put in a stamped envelope”. April 20 has transcended generations and its words are “probably the one that touched people the most because they saw themselves reflected in it and left an emotional imprint”assures its author Jesus Cifuentes.
1992 was the year of Celtas Cortos in LOS40. No less than four singles from his album Tell me a story (1991) conquered the position of honor of the list: To the rhythm of the sea, April 20, Tell me a story there Now it’s OK!!
In 1989, in a week and a half, Celtic Courts records his first album, EMERGENCY EXITtotally instrumental. The letters came with the second, unpresentable people (1990), as well as the beginning of its massive projection. But his rise was unstoppable with the third: Tell me a story (1991).
On tour, and with great pressure, Celtic Courts began to prepare his new material. The band retired to the Soria town of Abioncillo de Calatañazor during the first half of March 1991. The album was born there, his definitive work in terms of media and popular recognition. The success will last a whole decade until massive gigs and millionaire record sales.
Tell me a story was released in November 1991 and contained songs that are already musical classics in Spain and took the band from Valladolid to the top of the charts.
Celtic Courtsa name that refers to the popular brand of black tobacco smoked by drummer Nacho Castro and who jokingly came up with the name, so they made it up: Jesus Cifuentes, Nacho Castro, Nacho Martin, Goyo Yeves, Carlos, Alberto Garcia, Oscar Garcia there Caesar Cuenca.
The famous Turmo hut
/ Excerpt from the music video ’20 de abril’ by Celtas Cortos / PYRENEMEDIA
April 20 It’s written like a letter to an old friend, recalling with nostalgia his adventuresthe good times experienced in the past with a group of childhood friends. The first stanza would be the letterhead: April 20, 1990 (1990).
The song is also about a weekend spent in Cabaña del Turmo, an existing mountain refuge in the town of Benasque (Huesca), in the Estós Valley. Cifuentes remembers: “The Turmo hut described in the theme is real, it is in the Pyrenees of Huesca. The friends of the time met there for a few days, almost children”.
Cifuentes, the band’s lead singer and lyricist, revealed that the song’s lyrics are not based on a true story. He composed it while working as a social worker in the city of Avila in El Tiemblo. And although in its title it says April 20, 1990was actually written after.
Cifu explains, “The song has its share of reality, which is the basis of fiction. I was extradited from Valladolid in my first job. I accepted some objections and worked in an institute in El Tiemblo, a town in Ávila, as a social worker. I was relocated because it was that first moment where you stepped out of your surroundings and felt like it, and I used that to compose“.
April 20 was born during a night when the singer of the group of Pucelana was invaded by “melancholy”. Here’s how he said it: “The truth is that I felt a bit melancholic, like I didn’t belong, and the song came out of that melancholy.…reports a fictitious situation but the basis is real. It was night, I did nothing but remember and reminisce, I took out a pen and paper and started to write a letter.” And he concludes: “In this year that I spent there, I benefited from certain melancholy environments and that’s where the song comes from”.
Cifuentes ensures that the April 20 are”probably the lyrics that touched people the most, because they saw themselves reflected in it (…) a lot of people looked at themselves in the mirror of this song and it left an emotional imprint on them”.
/ The famous Turmo cabin / CELTIC COURTS
The song says… ‘Today there is hardly anyone from before, and those who exist have changed, have changed…’. the singer of Celtic Courts he assures that the song “pierced people’s hearts because it has a lot of feeling inside”. for the musician It is a source of pride and joy that April 20 has become such an important song for so many people.
Times have changed and this anthem lacked a music video that told this subject as it deservedto put us inside the song remembering every moment and landscape, every verse, every place we had always dreamed of having lived a thousand and one nights.
They succeeded more than thirty ‘twenties of Aprils’ for the song to have images and of course a story recorded in a deluxe format as the song deserves, in cinematic quality and excellent production from where the song was inspired.