Biel Gamundí i Francesc Aguiló: "We had to sing 'Little Joan' again."

PalmMore than 3,500 performances, some 200 songs, and almost 50 years of history: these are some of the figures that define Cucorba, the children's entertainment group that, since 1977, has become a key part of the collective memory of several generations of islanders. This is confirmed by the requests they have already received to reserve tickets for their final performance, which will take place on January 4, 2027, coinciding with the group's 50th anniversary. Before their farewell, they will release one last album, which they will make available for free online. We spoke with two of its founders and current members, Francesc Aguiló and Gabriel Gamundí.

After 50 years of Cucorba, are you sure you'll know when to stop?

— Biel Gamundí: [Laughs] We've always been very active in everything, with the town's cultural activities, the theater for adults… All of this will continue. Cucorba is stopping, but we're not.

From 1977 when you started doing clowning, what has changed and what remains the same?

— Francesc Aguiló: What remains the same is children's capacity to be amazed by shows that are made, conceived, and directed specifically for them. What has changed is practically everything else. Now we have a network of theaters, for example. When we started, the towns that had theaters had them in ruins or abandoned, and we usually performed outdoors. The age of the audience that comes to see us has also changed. Before, they were children aged 8 to 12 and 14, and now they are much younger, even as young as 6 or 7.

Because?

— FA: Some people think it's something for younger children, not just Cucorba, but animation and theater in general. You see it at FIET in Vilafranca, for example. It's a social change; their growth rate has accelerated, and they want to leave childhood and become teenagers earlier. This is related to their new way of interacting and having fun, with social media and new technologies.

And how have you experienced it?

— FA: I'm saddened. I don't like it; I think things need to mature, especially people. There are processes that exist, and they've been accelerated; I don't think that acceleration is positive for anyone. Generally, we're all very disoriented about this issue, including educators and authorities. They want to limit access to social media to 16 years old, but they'll find a way to access it anyway. They interact much less in person; they no longer play in the street, which used to be a way of building community.

When you were little, there were no nets, but there was nothing like Cucorba either, right?

— FA: You can imagine! Nothing at all! I have a vague memory of a performance of the Carmelite nuns that some women from Llucmajor put on in Muro, but nothing more. Keep in mind that many of the songs we've recovered were unknown even to us: the Bugui Bugui, The fly…We had to learn them in order to teach them. They were popular, but not widely known. After the dictatorship ended, we, along with other organizations like recreational groups, dedicated ourselves to paving this way.

— BG: There was a social and political effervescence that was also demonstrated by the creation of neighborhood associations in Palma and by the enthusiasm with which popular festivals were revived. We fit in well within all of this. The first year we did 17 performances, without really knowing why, and the second year it was 80. Then we set our objectives, what we wanted to do, because at the beginning everything had been somewhat improvised.

What were these goals you set for yourselves? The commitment to the language has always been there.

— FA: Without a doubt. We were always clear that our work should contribute to linguistic normalization. A paradox has arisen, because back then schools were in Spanish, and yet Catalan was used much more in the street than now, when schools are in Catalan and you hear more Spanish in the street. We also wanted to recover folk songs, along with proverbs, idioms, riddles, and all the vocabulary we could, and games too, of course. In this sense, we've made a playful contribution that will last beyond our performances; there's a lot of material that will be preserved forever.

It can also be a tool for integrating newly arrived children.

— BG: We don't see many performances, to be honest, but we have been told that schools use our songs. For example, in Cala d'Or, which has a high percentage of immigrants, they use them to teach the local language and culture to the children. This makes us very happy.

How many times has he sung Little John?

— BG: [Laughs] We've lost count for ages! But it must have been played at all our shows!

— DOES: Little John He beat us [laughs]. We always tried to change our repertoire, not just from year to year, but between performances. And Little John It was one of the songs we sang the most, along with Bugui Bugui, The elephant, The fly…At one point we decided to give it a break, to choose when we sang it and when we didn't, but at every performance, mothers and fathers came up to us asking why we hadn't sung it. So we resigned ourselves to it and we always sing it now.

— BG: Even now you can see how much people love it. When we say it's coming up, at performances, we always hear the kids and parents go "Oooooh!" No matter how many times we've done it, it's always exciting.