Their faces cannot be seen because they are covered by long, thick hair that falls over their shoulders while they play their instruments. Mario Rejos, the bassist, 23 years old, sports a tattoo with the letters AC/DC on his shoulder; Iván Sánchez, 26 years old, guitarist and singer, wears a Permanent Paralysis t-shirt; and Pablo Aliseda, the drummer, 19 years old, has put on a printed shirt that surely triumphed back in the Summer of Love in 1967. They form the Amposta trio, they are from the Madrid neighborhood of San Blas and they are rehearsing in places near their homes. They sound like a mix between Leño from the first album (1979) and Triana, also from the seventies. They constitute, therefore, an anomaly within current young Spanish music, which is nourished, in its most selling version, by the urban genre (Quevedo), light pop (Aitana) or rappers converted into mellifluous poppers (Rels B). And living outside of trends when you are 20 years old is an almost political position. Amposta and other groups appear to be “proudly old-fashioned”, bands made up of members who were not born when their favorite groups were already achieving success: Rosendo Mercado, Extremoduro, Triana, Las Grecas, Los Rodríguez, Los Ronaldos, Tequila or Platero y Tú.
José Carlos Sánchez, Charlie, He will be, by far, the oldest to participate in this report. At 65 years old, he is part of the old school of the recording industry. Charlie, as he is called in the sector, is responsible for signing Extremoduro and Platero y Tú, among others, for Dro/Warner (record company where he served as president), and today he runs the Metales Preciozos label, also specialized in rock. “When I started with the new company, five years ago, there were almost no young rock bands. But now there are many groups: I think we are at the beginning of a scene, which only needs a group that explodes, as happened with Extremoduro in the nineties.”
Charlie assumes that the electric guitar genre returns cyclically in music. “Rock has been killed many times, but it is always there. It is one of the few genres that is inherited. If the father has an AC/DC album at home, the son is going to listen to it and with a good chance of getting hooked,” he points out, and remembers: “In the nineties, when we signed Extremoduro and Platero y Tú, it was the time of techno and indie. I remember that they told us that it was a mistake to bet on rock, that we were not cool. And then look. Now the same thing could happen.” The record executive provides information about the loyalty of the public: “In Spanish newsstands, only three rock and roll magazines remain in paper version: The Heavy, Route 66 y Popular 1”.
A clarification is in order: this report does not contemplate groups assigned to more or less pop-rock. indie, such as Alcalá Norte, Carolina Durante, La Paloma or Biznaga. Not even Arde Bogotá, which have rocked the scene, but do not show such a militant tendency with Spanish rock. of-all-life such as Amposta, La Perra Blanco, Drugos, Linaje, Vamos Con Todo (formerly Volvoreta), Juventude, Bala, Vértize, Puño Dragón or Dura Calá. Many in their twenties, others in their thirties.
Amposta has finished the rehearsal, the three of them open some cans of beer and begin to throw out ideas. In the background you can hear the unmistakable voice sideways by Jaime Urrutia, who rehearses in a nearby venue. Iván, the singer, confirms: “With my tastes, I felt like a weirdo at school. I only talked about music with the teachers, because I had no other choice. In my class, only my teacher liked Iron Maiden.” Pablo, the drummer, adds: “My colleagues in the neighborhood only listen to reggaeton and rap, the typical stuff. Trap also. When I met Mario and Iván, a world opened up to me. I could finally talk about music with kids my age.” Mario, the bassist, elaborates: “It’s not just music, it encompasses many things. I, for example, don’t go out to party. I’m going to see concerts. And I don’t go to clubs. I’ve sometimes gone with friends and I listen to the music from the club and I say: ‘What the hell are you giving me?’. It’s just that I left there in a bad way. And on top of that they charge you 15 bucks for a drink. Let’s fuck it…”
Amposta publishes its first album in a few weeks. Two songs can now be heard on the platforms. They were the opening act for Alcalá Norte last December at La Riviera, where they performed a furious version of This Madrid, from Leño. “Alcalá Norte acted like a motherfucker. They paid us 1,000 euros. You had never charged so much,” they point out. His name, Amposta, is the same as that of a street in his neighborhood, San Blas, in Madrid.
The incipient movement is spread throughout Spain (there are bands in Andalusia, Galicia, Asturias, Madrid, Catalonia…) and they share youth and a sound architecture based on the classic guitar-bass-drums. Most use the digital universe to travel to the past. This is the case of Alba Blanco, 29, from Cádiz, who introduces herself as La Perra Blanco and who resorted to the enormous YouTube library to research the singers she is passionate about. “When I was 18 and my friends went to the club to dance techno, I talked to them about Carl Perkins. Imagine. I played videos on YouTube that were in black and white. They didn’t understand anything, of course. They told me: ‘If a musician isn’t dead, you don’t like him.’ Alba, an excellent guitarist as well as a singer, has just published her third work, Lovers & Fears, brimming with music inspired by that recorded more than half a century ago. “In my house there was no rock from the 50s. Everything arose from an impulse of mine,” he explains. “I stayed at home researching on YouTube. I had no one to share it with. But that made it more attractive. I’m a young aunt from La Línea de la Concepción playing classic rock and roll; I can’t go against it anymore.”
Not everyone was trained in that isolation. In some cases these young people became passionate about songs in their own home, with their parents’ nightclub. Jano Díaz, 29 years old, Asturian and singer of Drugos, a group that has just released an album, Make noise while you can, He owes his love to the vinyl he found at home: “My first contact with music was my parents. They are fans of Queen, the Beatles and also Calamaro. I remember car trips and asking my father to put on a loop Maradona, from Calamaro. “I would have been six years old.”
The case of Lineage is special. The singer and guitarist goes by the name of Aarón Romero, 20 years old and son of Kutxi Romero, leader of Marea. “I was born with a guitar in my hands,” explains Aarón for this report. “We are lucky that in Berriozar (a Navarrese municipality six kilometers from Pamplona) there is a deep-rooted rock culture. This is a microcosm where young people play the guitar and get together to start bands. It is striking that in a place of 10,000 inhabitants there are so many young rock bands. It is a good pool.” Linaje released their first album in 2025, They unleashed the dogs, and since then they embarked on a tour of venues, which always fill up. Aarón confirms a generational communion at the concerts: “A lot of young audiences come to our live shows, who have surely inherited the passion of their parents, who have played Marea and Extremoduro albums for them. A curious division occurs in the recitals, like the one Robe invented: on one side the people who go to dance and pogo (the children) and on the other the calmer ones (the parents). It is essential that a young audience follows you, because they are the ones who are going to be there all their lives.”
The message of the lyrics of these new bands tends to update concepts of the groups that have influenced them. They don’t like the world they live in either, digital control scares them, they avoid toxic relationships and unrequited love is still just as painful and prone to writing a good song.
Back at Amposta’s rehearsal, the three joke about their long hair, which they have sported since they turned eleven or 12 years old. “We have never seen a reggaeton player with long hair. That’s why we wear it,” they laugh. And they finish: “More than old young, We are normal kids who like old things.” In the three hours that the meeting with EL PAÍS lasted, they did not use their mobile phones at any time.