Què volen aquesta gent?
Concèntric, 1968
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On the 28th of January 1968 Maria del Mar Bonet presented her second single, Què volen aquest gent? In the Cova del Drac in Barcelona, also issued by Concèntric.
Of the four songs on the record, three are written by her, both the music and the lyrics, following the structure and theme of traditional songs.
The other song, Què volen aquesta gent?, which provides the title of the record, with lyrics by Lluís Serrahima and music by Maria del Mar Bonet, became a reference in the fight against Franco and was soon censored by the regime until 1977. The lyrics refer to a newspaper item about the death of a student in Madrid when the Francoist police went to his home to arrest him. Maria del Mar suggested to Lluís Serrahima that he write it in the form of a ballad, in the style of the song, La presó de Lleida. In an interview by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán for the book Antología de la Nova Cançó (Ediciones de cultura popular, 1968) she speaks of the protest song in this way: Among us today there is a ridiculous tendency to pre-evaluate a song for everything it says and doesn’t say politically. […] A protective climate is being created of any lyric, whether good or bad, just for being political. And me no, I don’t agree […] there are bad songs and good songs.
Throughout the year she performed many concerts in both Catalonia and the Spanish State.
On the 28th of February her father, Joan Bonet, gave a talk to the Círculo Mallorquín of Palma where his two children, Maria del Mar and Joan Ramon, gave a recital after his intervention.
The single came out in March. She performed in the University of Salamanca with Marià Alberó and it was a great success.
Alongside these performances as a member of Els Setze Jutges she also worked with the Grup de Folk, with whom she had made contact via Pau Riba, and took part in the Festival Folk held in the Parc de la Ciutadella in Barcelona in May of that year.
In August she took part in the II Festival of Catalan Song in the Castle of Bellver in Mallorca together with her brother Joan Ramon Bonet, Gerard Mates, Toni Moreno, Rafael Subirachs, Lluís Llach, and Guillermina Motta.
On the 29th of October she premiered the play Vent de garbí i una mica de por by Maria Aurèlia Capmany with the Nova Companyia de Barcelona, directed by Ventura Pons, in one of the few incursions into the world of theatre and which turned out to be a very good experience.
Also of note was her participation in the Festival de la Nova Cançó held in December in the Teatre Romea in Barcelona.
