Valtónic, on exile: "I thought about committing suicide many times."

After in July of And after months without giving interviews, Josep Miquel Arenas, known musically as Valtònyc, opens up in a long conversation in the new cultural magazine , presented yesterday, Tuesday, in Girona. The quarterly, 114-page publication was born in the "record time" of just four months after , entrusted journalist Andreu Mas with the management of the project. In the interview, Josep Miquel Arenas reflects on the impact of exile and the depression he suffered, and explains that he considered taking his own life.

"I even thought about committing suicide, I really thought about committing suicide many times," he notes when asked if "in order to find yourself you must first lose yourself." The rapper links the situation with his family background, since when he was eight years old he left an adoptive family and grew up with his sister, who was ten years older than him. When he found , from where he did not return until Valtònyc admits that "it was the first time" that he couldn't go out alone.



He explains his decision to leave music by the personal change he has undergone in the last five years. "It's not that I've grown tired of the Valtònyc character, it's that I've grown tired of who I was five years ago, as everyone should," he explains in a 12-page interview with Andreu Mas. "If you look at how you were five years ago and don't come to the conclusion that that person from five years ago was a is that you are going wrong.

" Now he assures that if one day he wants to make music again, he will, but with another name: "People should not prejudge, because this character is very politicized." Now he feels very far from what is considered urban music in the Països Catalans and from musicians like Lildami and Figa Flawas, and from . But he reflects at the same time that he can no longer sing the same way about social injustice.

"In the end, what's happened to me by living in a more developed European country than Spain is that I've taken the social elevator. I have a lot of things to sort out, but I try not to be a hypocrite. I don't want to rap that Renfe doesn't work if I actually travel by car every day.

I have a good life now, but I tell them. I prefer to retract my thoughts by reading Marx, Dostoyevsky, or Gorky than by writing a song," he summarizes. In defense of honesty It is, then, in reading that Joan Miquel Arenas says he has found a new space for refuge and creation.

The interview avoids the political situation, but Valtònyc does thank Lluís Puig for giving him advice for the first time. "No one had ever told me, 'You're about to make a mistake; don't do that.' I burst into tears," he recalls.

But in the end, when asked whether the ultimate goal in this life is to lose one's freedom or one's dignity, the rapper calls for "honesty." "You have to say from the beginning how far you are capable of going, not infantilize people, you don't have to play with them; because if you promise something and you don't keep it, people get discouraged, disillusionment and impotence set in. Then you have to go until you are there you are where you are there you are where you are there you are where you are where you are.

In a few years I would have lost my freedom. Now I would prefer to say: "No, up to here"", he concludes..