A Movistar Plus documentary series reconstructs the rise and fall of a group that was about to succeed in the world and threw it all away
“But didn’t they realize they were gay?” asks at one point in ‘Locomía’ the Gipuzkoan Lurdes Iribar, showgirl and designer of the group’s styling, whom the fans hated when they believed she was someone’s girlfriend of its members. Let’s go back to the Spain immediately before the splendor of 1992. At the end of the 1980s, between the embers of the Movida and the open bar of the socialist government, four guys appear with impossible shoulder pads and pointe shoes who, armed with fans, embody the Hedonistic drug and sex freak that was lived in Ibiza. “You leak more oil than Locomía’s van,” we used to say when we didn’t know what the acronym LGTB meant. The music of a group can be ridiculous, but its history is not. The three-episode documentary series that Movistar Plus premieres on June 22 tells a Shakespearean tragedy to the rhythm of that “disco, Ibiza, Locomía” that those of us over 40 years of age have embedded in the cerebral cortex.
As protagonists, two unforgettable villains and a lot of touching handsome boys who went through the band and today live on memories. “People hanging in the past”, in the definition of Xavier Font, the creator and ideologue of Locomía, who at the age of 17 sold fans in Barcelona’s nightclubs and customized priest’s robes. An egocentric who slept every night with a new conquest and who dreamed of having “an urban tribe at his feet.” Font today sports tribal tattoos on his shaved skull and knows what prison is like after serving a three-year sentence for popper and ecstasy trafficking. “At 59 years old, he is a child, for better and for worse,” says the director of the series, Jorge Laplace. He still boasts of having created and destroyed Locomía, which owes its name to one of its first members, the Dutchman Gard Passchier, who actually wanted to write My Madness.
Manuel Arjona was only 16 years old when he lived in a commune and sold clothes in the markets of Ibiza. The fourth original Locomía was Luis Font, Xavier’s brother. Although they only danced and posed, they were the attraction of the Ku nightclub. Even Freddie Mercury wanted them for his legendary 41st birthday party at the Pikes Hotel on the island, in which 350 bottles of Moët Chandon were consumed and fireworks were seen from Mallorca. The pointed shoes worn by the leader of Queen in
the last video clip he recorded before he died, ‘I’m Going Slightly Mad’, are from Font. The Ibiza party ended when the old mill where the Locomías lived was burned down. And then the second great villain of this story appears, the music producer and manager José Luis Gil, who is also tattooed, although the two snakes in his arms are hidden under the sleeves of his shirt. The ‘golden blonde’ of the Spanish recording industry was already presiding over Hispavox at the age of 25. Perales, Mari Trini, Miguel Bosé, Enrique and Ana, Alaska and Dinarama and Nacha Pop, among others, owe their careers to him.
Xavier Font, creator of Locomía, and the series director Jorge Laplace.
Cut to Madrid, 1989. Gil senses the commercial potential of the boys and puts them in a studio to create a glamorous and sophisticated ‘boy band’ destined for the dance floors. A leonine contract prohibits them from revealing that they are all gay. «You cannot blame them for not coming out of the closet, because in the 90s nobody did. They were not activists, but it was so obvious that they were different… They served as representation for many people”, recalls Jorge Laplace. They can’t put on makeup or go out partying either. They start recording ‘Locomía’, the first single from the album ‘Taiyo’ (sun, in Japanese), but none of them know how to sing. So
the chorus of «disco, Ibiza, Locomía, moda, Ibiza, Locomía’ Gil himself recites it.
Later there will be songs like ‘Rumba Samba Mambo’ and Gorbachev’, in honor of the president of the USSR at that time. They last four years and two more albums with multiple line-up changes. Perhaps in Spain we didn’t take them too seriously, but in Latin America they were devastating and constituted a fan phenomenon. “They were the typical group that filled the airport when they landed. In Latin America they hit the ball”, certifies Laplace, who does not agree with the description of supervillains for Font and Gil. «I like to play with the grays, that the character is portrayed with his lights and his shadows. I earned the trust and generosity of Xavier and Jose Luis, knowing that this is not the typical documentary in which everyone is going to look good. I aspire for the viewer to complete the look of the character.
Antonio Albella in his time as a television presenter and member of Locomía and currently in the documentary.
End of 1992. After triumphing in Viña del Mar, just when they are about to make the leap to the United States, Xavier Font, who was still getting paid but was no longer a member of the group, convinces the rest to leave Gil. One is the owner of the Locomía concept, the other has the rights to the songs. Lawsuits and anger from fans, who have to choose two different groups that perform under the same name. End of the dream, although the war is still going on and today you can find a group called Locomía performing there.
Those who were lucky found work putting drinks, acting in theater or as hostesses of the AVE. Santos Blanco, the ‘blonde from Locomía’, died of natural causes in a Gijón social shelter in 2018. He was 46 years old. Less than a month later, Frank Romero died at the same age from a bacterial infection. «Locomía could have entered the American market, which highly values the artificial. There was a contract with Sony and real interest from Emilio Estefan”, points out Jorge Laplace, who highlights the symbolic value of everything falling apart in 1992. “The year in which we wanted to show the world that we were modern to overcome a historical complex. Later, we verified that the modernity of the country, like that of Locomía, was not as much as it was sold».
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