Who Has Stolen My April?

Since 1988, on his sixth album, writing in “certain bars in Madrid whose name I don’t want to remember,” Joaquín Sabina cried out with his torn voice: Who has stolen my April?

It’s a song for the defeated, for the misunderstood, for those who tried and failed due to causes stronger than them or beyond their control.

In the inn of failure, where there’s no comfort or elevator, helplessness and humidity share a mattress. And when life passes down the street like a hurricane, the man in the gray suit pulls a dirty calendar from his pocket and shouts: Who has stolen my April?

Joaquín Sabina

From that April of 1988 to the close of this April 2020—it seems like a lifetime ago—people have returned to vinyl classics, to feel accompanied and shout:

Who has stolen my April? How could this happen to me?

“Who has stolen my April? I kept it in the drawer where I keep my heart…”

This is one of Sabina’s signature songs, because we already know that loves aren’t easy, but when we understand the world is full of various unfortunate situations, the small tales of various losers—because yes, those who didn’t deserve it but got dealt a raw deal (complicated situation), those who had gratuitous cruelty for lunch, without possible moral.

Perhaps like me, or rather us in these moments, let’s just remember we’re not alone, and although this April is ending, who stole it from us?

“The high school girl failed almost all subjects the year that boy left her pregnant. And when the Latin teacher calls roll on the blackboard, tears of heartbreak roll down a blog page, and she writes: who has stolen my April?” sings Sabina.

And there’s more: her mother’s husband left on the last train “with a hairdresser twenty years younger”: “And when they display those Instamatic smiles in Paris, defeated in her armchair, my old lady withers watching Falcon Crest, and thinks…”