The “Baroque Sarao” that Carmen Urbita and Ana Garriga staged, “Las hijas de Felipe” for their followers at the Palacio de la Prensa in Madrid.Podium Podcast
Carmen Urbita and Ana Garriga, a 34-year-old from Madrid and Salamanca, have in common that they have a PhD in Baroque Literature from Brown University. Also his passion for Saint Teresa of Jesus. Baroque women are their specialty and together three years ago they launched Las hijas de Felipe, a podcast produced by Podium Podcast (part of the Prisa group, publisher of this newspaper) on gossip, anecdotes and claims with several social undertones and an under-researched one part of the story. His intention, in his own words, is to “bring the 16th and 17th centuries out of these dark and forgotten corners; from that list of historical figures, generally male, that people had to memorize in high school or for the selectividad.”
They consider their audience to be “engaged and very proactive” who continually respond to their suggestions. Urbita explains it with a specific case: “Once I noticed that Felipe II had asked his daughters in a letter [de las que el podcast toma su nombre] looking out the windows of the Alcázar to see the works in El Escorial and learn how they are developing. I said that from that point on it seemed impossible for me to see anything like that. But a follower cleared our doubts. He used a digital tool that calculated distance and orography to find out if the human eye was able to visualize them,” she recalls, still surprised.
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A small part of this dedicated following met her personally on the first Sunday in June in her baroque sarao. In the heart of Madrid’s Gran Vía, in the Palacio de la Prensa, and with great visual means, they joined their listeners and friends in an experience that they wanted to make more immediate than usual.
He’s among those podcasts that see live meetings as a very effective way to expand their universe. Lucía Lijtmaer and Isa Calderón’s “El Deforme Semanal Ideal Total” (Radio Primavera Sound) exploded when its creators began making public recordings and their followers could regularly go to the theater to see (and not just hear) the sound project ). They have done it on permanent tour at places like the Teatro del Barrio, the Colisuem and the Lope de Vega, all in Madrid, the Teatre Victòria in Barcelona and the Corral de Comedias in Alcalá de Henares. And the huge success of Estirando el chicle (Podium Podcast) culminated last year when Carolina Iglesias and Victoria Martín gathered thousands of people at the Wizink Center in Madrid and started an interesting line of business.
In the case of Urbita and Garriga, they had already recorded some episodes of Las hijas de Felipe live while participating in a festival specializing in audio content to which they had been invited. However, this time they decided that the content would not be recorded and that only those who had attended the physical venue would be able to enjoy it live. The participants’ social media posts are the only remaining clue to this particular episode, which both of them find “in itself very baroque,” they explain shortly afterwards.
After completing their doctorate at the American university, the two returned to Madrid this year. For this reason they decided to create this baroque sarao and convene a live broadcast to meet the community of Spanish listeners who have been following them thousands of kilometers away for several seasons.
“For us, this meeting had great symbolic value. There’s something very valid and exciting about claiming these distant historical figures and bringing them into the present,” says Garriga. “And it was a way of personally thanking all the friends who helped us in the beginning, whoever designed the cover or whoever composed the tune. It was also a gift to ourselves after living in isolation for so long,” recalled her mic partner.
They are used to scripting their episodes and when they go live they tend to keep up with the usual pace of their recordings. But this time they wanted it to be something special, “very self-referential and panoramic without being tied to any particular character or theme,” they comment.
In addition to their shared interest in Santa Teresa, as the chapters progress they discover personal ties that are reflected between the two. It’s something that also happens with your audience. “From the first moment we received messages with suggestions of historical figures who could appear in the podcast. Or questions from one of the chapters that make for a different episode,” says Urbita. For this reason, the direct, which they want to continue to cultivate in the future, is an additional incentive in the numerous parallel projects that this podcast produces. “When you’re relating to someone you want to claim and seeing people in their seats smiling and nodding from the stage, it’s an almost magical moment.”
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