French composer Claude Debussy in a photograph from 1900. GETTY IMAGES
When I last visited them, they were occupying a couple of dingy little offices in a corner of the Casa de la Radio in Prado del Rey. They are four cats, enthusiastic and cautious, but four, and with the power of their voices they support a radio station that hardly anyone notices, but whose disappearance would make Spain a drier and more regrettable country. Radio Clásica, the Cinderella of the public body, is a marvel that doesn’t sleep even in the summer when its main program goes on vacation and the grill is filled with ephemeral surprises, to the delight of those of us who nap and ride along the back roads of the coast with her.
Radio Clásica could fulfill a ready-made programme, reproduce itself as an orchestral radio formula or as a concert replay loop, but paradoxical as it may sound, it is not music radio. At least that’s not how it’s intended. The Grill is very diverse and includes all radio genres, from documentaries to interviews to news. The announcers earn their meager salaries not only with their exquisite pronunciation of composers’ names (no one knows how they say Richard Strauss or Debussy like them), but also with scripts that are well peppered with paragraphs. For example, this month I’m enjoying the Gran Repertorio podcasts, the show where Daniel Quirós narrates an episode or character from music history for almost an hour. Some deliveries are a prodigy of rhythm, synthesis and elegance.
The fact that four enthusiastic music lovers are holding such a high-quality radio in their hands, which hardly differs from its European sisters, fills them with pride and shame at the same time. The pride of having colleagues who can get so far with so little, and the shame of a country that, instead of celebrating its work and making it more comfortable, is content to tolerate their existence.
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