Chicho Sánchez Ferlosio
José Antonio Sánchez Ferlosio, commonly known by his nickname Chicho Sánchez Ferlosio, was a Spanish anti-Francoist singer-songwriter and poet. Although the son of Falangist leader Rafael Sánchez Mazas, by the 1960s, Chicho Sánchez had joined the anti-Francoist opposition and began making and publishing music for the movement. Initially a communist, he later became an anarchist and continued making music through the Spanish transition to democracy.
Biography
José Antonio Sánchez Ferlosio, later known by the nickname "Chicho", was born in 1940. He was the third son of the Falangist leader Rafael Sánchez Mazas, and the younger brother of, Rafael and Gabriela Sánchez Ferlosio. After growing up in Francoist Spain, a regime which his own father had helped to establish, Sánchez turned against the regime and became a staunch anti-Francoist activist.By the 1960s, Sánchez had become a popular singer-songwriter of the anti-Francoist opposition. In 1961, he met a group of Italian anti-fascist musicians known as Cantacronache, with which he travelled around Spain collecting anti-Francoist poems and songs. Two years later, in 1963, he released the album Canciones de la resistencia española, which he published clandestinely in Sweden.
To evade Francoist censorship, Sánchez often presented the political content of his songs indirectly, as was the case with his 1964 song "Gallo rojo, gallo negro". Sánchez popularised the song "La Huelga", written by Chilean singer-songwriter Roberto Alarcón, among Spanish listeners. He also inspired the Catalan Nova Cançó movement, which sought to rehabilitate regional cultures that were marginalised by the centralisation of the Francoist regime.
In 1965, Sánchez joined the Communist Party of Spain (Marxist–Leninist), but he quickly became disillusioned with Marxism-Leninism after visiting People's Republic of Albania and observing the political repression taking place there. He soon left the communist party and became an anarchist. Inspired by the anarchist philosophy of Agustín García Calvo, Sánchez became intensely critical of institutions such as the state, capitalism and the Catholic Church. He later joined the National Confederation of Labour, an anarchist trade union centre.
His music remained popular following the Spanish transition to democracy, taking a place among the counterculture that emerged during the 1970s. Later in his life, Sánchez was interviewed in a park in Madrid for the 2003 film Soldiers of Salamina, in which the protagonist investigated the unsuccessful attempt by Spanish republicans to execute his father. Sánchez died that same year, in 2003.
Discography
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