Lucía Sócam has spent years dedicating her lyrics to recounting the experiences of people who were persecuted or murdered by Franco's regime. She says that there are songs in which she has received texts, stories, poems... in which she talks about exile, the Civil War, the post-war period, the helplessness of many women, stolen children... "Chilling episodes that happened in different parts of Spain" and that the worst thing about them is that "they were true", she points out.
Her way of working is to raise awareness in society, as music is a weapon which, she says, perhaps because it is more entertaining, manages to reach a wide range of sectors. To people who perhaps have not read books on historical memory or who do not attend debates... it is a method of transmitting these stories through melodies.
For the singer-songwriter, the most serious aspect of this country's history is that to this day these acts have not been condemned, which does not allow for justice. Moreover, she believes that the silence that has been passed down from generation to generation is the result of fear and the traumas suffered by these people.
Sócam tells how, through the historical memory associations in her town, Guillena, in Seville, she discovered that her grandfather was on the list of people who had been victims of Franco's regime. She points out that she did not know that he had been in prison and that little by little she managed to get her elderly aunts "with the windows down and in a very low voice" to tell her something about it, "but not much", she says.
The music professional says that her grandfather's life was not at all easy: he fled his village, defended himself in Madrid as best he could and then was sent to the Battle of the Ebro. Later, he was arrested in Castellón and imprisoned in a concentration camp. Moreover, he was not the only member of his family to be repressed; other siblings of his grandfather were also killed, as well as a great-aunt of his for "knowing how to read", he says.
For the singer-songwriter, becoming aware of what had happened to her relatives and neighbours in her town motivated her to do her part through her compositions. In 1936, Guillena was home to 3,000 people, 200 of whom disappeared. "It is difficult to find a family without a relative who has been a victim of Franco's regime", she says.
