I have a thought. It is the line Amaia uttered on La Revuelta just before she began to sing, but it also serves as a summary of Amaia: Plano secuencia, Luis Álvarez Barrero’s book now on sale. The volume reviews with an almost obsessive meticulousness Amaia Romero’s public life up to that particular performance, and the fact that it marks the ending works: nearly 300 pages of interviews, statements, criticisms, television appearances, gossip magazines, social media, and viral videos that ultimately culminate in one of her most memorable moments.
This is not a conventional biography, and certainly not an authorized one, although Amaia’s circle is aware of its existence and publication, according to El Diario de Navarra. The book is better described as a monograph, a gathering of media material transformed into narrative. Álvarez Barrero traces virtually every public trace of Amaia that can help reconstruct how the figure we know today came to be. OT 2017 and Eurovision are present, of course, but so are Rock Camp, Rock Lemon y Tal, her early videos, the short film “Si puedo estar contigo,” Marisol (whom he even comes to know), and her first television appearances. Mónica Naranjo, Alfred García, La La Love You, La Bien Querida, and even an underground figure like Dianka, with whom he co-writes “Tocotó.”
There are details everywhere and an extensive amount of documentation. The book recounts the family’s concerns when Amaia entered OT, fearing she might overstep what she said, even though it was precisely those spontaneous outbursts that would become some of the program’s most celebrated moments. It recovers her early solo performances, the initial collaboration with La Estrella de David, the process with Santiago Motorizado, Refree’s attempt to push her toward a Scott Walker–like sound, and even that studio-video leak in which she appeared working on new material before her debut, quickly erased by those who posted and later removed it.
There are, of course, “Pero no pasa nada,” “Cuando no sé quién soy,” and “Si abro los ojos no es real,” although the third album receives considerably fewer pages than the other two. Then there is the pandemic, intimate home concerts, her mental health struggles, the glare of public exposure, the controversy surrounding Albert Pla’s book La Mesías, the DGT announcement, and a handful of episodes that we probably had forgotten. There is even an entire chapter devoted to witty remarks of hers that didn’t fit the main narrative.
All of this is dotted with Beatles references, inserted with enough grace to prevent the book from becoming a mere sequence of statements and dates. The organization isn’t strictly chronological—likely deliberate—though at times it feels like it takes too long to reach the moment of creating the albums, and the debut occupies a slightly disproportionate amount of space.
The book’s value lies precisely in that accumulation of different stories. It doesn’t uncover some unknown Amaia, but it preserves a vast amount of small details that, taken individually, might seem merely anecdotal and that together explain how her public persona was built. It’s one of those books we will turn to in the future, when Amaia has more material behind her and more records in the drawer, and we want to recall minutiae that today still feel relatively near.
Leaving “Tengo un pensamiento” for the finale is a fitting close, perhaps the only possible one. After all that journey through statements, interviews, videos, and both grand and tiny histories, reaching that performance represents the book’s logical apex. In the end, it is, for now, the pinnacle of the career of the “neighborhood neighbor from Mendillorri.”
