El día de la liberación: Pringles, Benidorm and freedom

Today is the day. The song says it from the first line, and says it like someone who has waited a long time to be able to say it. El día de la liberación (Liberation Day) is a personal independence party, the kind that isn't on the calendar but that everyone marks in red on their own.

The lyrics announce there's already a winner, and it isn't the losing manipulator. I really like that way of presenting the end of a toxic relationship as a clear victory, no draws. And also the detail of the wounds: today is the day yesterday's wounds stop bleeding. It doesn't say there's no scar. It says it no longer bleeds, and that's a great deal.

Let your mother cook for you

But the best part is the humour with which it's celebrated. Let your mother cook for you now, or feed yourself from a tube of Pringles. It's such a domestic and at the same time cruel image that it makes me laugh every time. I picture the other one in the kitchen, not knowing how to light the hob, crisp tube in hand.

Meanwhile, the narrator is happy in Benidorm. Not on a paradise island, not on a secret beach: in Benidorm, with all its skyscraper-and-beach-bar glamour. It strikes me as the perfect destination to celebrate freedom, the most popular and the most cheerful.

And the final thrust comes with a very this-planet expression: the other one is desperately looking for another narcissistic source of supply. Like an emotional vampire in search of a new dinner.

There's a short bridge that brings back an idea present in other PLANETA GAYFOLK songs: from myth to vomit. And it adds a childish, wicked flourish: «¡y tú solito, qué bonito!» (and you all on your own, how lovely!). It's playground tone, and that's why it works so well.

The chorus invites you to shout loud: we are free!, in the plural. For me that's the most important thing: it isn't an individual liberation, it belongs to everyone who has been through something similar.

Put it on the day you sign a divorce, hand back some keys or block a number. And if you can, play it in Benidorm.

The full lyrics are below. Listen on Spotify