Despite the economic difficulties of his humble and large family, little Miguel found a favourable environment to reinforce a musical talent that came naturally to him. His childhood years in Albalate were fundamental in cementing his future.
What province and region does Albalate de Cinca belong to? How is Miguel Fleta remembered in Albalate?

Miguel Fleta was very popular. He could be compared to today’s pop and rock stars. His tours of South America aroused passions (Fleta gave his name to a brand of ice cream there, for example). Newspaper reports from all over the world speak of cheers in the streets. In Cádiz, after a performance of La Bohème in 1925, hundreds of people who had listened to it on the radio crowded around him and, without letting him get into their car, carried him on their shoulders from the Teatro Real to his hotel.  That same year, during the performance of Carmen at the Liceo in Barcelona, some cinemas and theatres in the city interrupted their performances to broadcast by telephone the moment when Fleta sang the romanza “La fleur que tu m’avais jetée” (The flower that you had flown to me).

As elitist as the world of opera has traditionally been, there were factors that helped make Miguel Fleta a mass idol. His very extensive work in sound recordings, his multitude of recordings without shying away from more popular genres, the expansion of the radio in the 1920s… favoured all this. As well as embodying the triumph of a person of the people (a farmer’s son), he himself was a likeable, impetuous person (with a touch of unconsciousness), and all that helps.

His wedding in Salamanca to Carmen Mirat in 1927 was a social event: it was even the subject of a documentary. Beyond that, Miguel Fleta’s film appearances are very rare. It is striking that such a popular character, so aware of the importance of the social media, did not have more prominence in the cinema: only the film Miguelón o el último contrabandista (made by the Aragonese Adolfo Aznar and Hans Behrendt, and with a soundtrack by Pablo Luna) and a brief appearance in the film Gigantes y cabezudos, by Florián Rey, are worth mentioning.

Look up information about the filmmakers Adolfo Aznar and Florián Rey: both were from La Almunia de Doña Godina; the latter had a longer career, he was a very successful director. Do you have any films with an Aragonese theme? Do some research on it (where it was shot, what story it told, who starred in it).

His public life and his opinions are related to a complex and contradictory political evolution. He sang the “Cara al sol” (Falangist anthem), but also the “Himno de Riego” and “La Marseillaise”, which have a more republican identification. He lived through very turbulent times, and it is not easy to judge him by his attitudes, especially because his death at such a young age prevents us from tracing a more complete ideological path. No one knows how he would have evolved if he had lived during Franco’s dictatorship: would he have become disillusioned and become an anti-Francoist, as notable early Falangists did, or would he have settled in with the regime? It is better to let him rest and enjoy that exceptional voice with phrasing, with “air” and with prodigious carnality.

 

Despite Miguel Fleta’s untimely death, music continued to be closely linked to his surname. His eldest son, Miguel, was an artistic agent and singing teacher (he taught the great Montserrat Caballé) and Alfonso also devoted himself to lyrical song as “Pierre Fléta”.

His widow Carmen Mirat saw to it that her children received musical training. Among them were Elia and Paloma, who formed a light music duo. The Fleta Sisters triumphed during the 1950s in Spain and Cuba, especially on the radio, with great hits such as “El chacachá del tren” (a song that has been widely covered). After Paloma left music, Elia continued her solo career, more closely linked to jazz, for several years. Paloma settled in the United States, and her son developed a unique acoustic rock style under the stage name of Kirk Fleta, bearing his grandfather’s surname.

Another son of the tenor, Javier, had musical incursions as a baritone and as an interpreter in Spanish of songs from American films and series. The younger son, Miguel Ángel, settled in Colombia and two of his daughters formed the duo Elia and Elizabeth, pioneers of Caribbean funk soul with a touch of psychedelia, in a brief but intense and highly appreciated career in the first half of the 1970s. Their song “Todo en la vida” is part of the soundtrack of the Netflix series Narcos. Colombian Paula Arenas, who is married to his great-grandson, makes melodic music and was nominated for four Latin Grammys in 2021.

Find information about the musical styles mentioned in this section: light music – jazz – funk – soul – acoustic rock.

Are you familiar with any of them? Ask at home about these styles? Do they coincide with the musical tastes of your relatives?

 

Those two songs by Elia and Elizabeth are from almost fifty years ago, don’t they seem to you to some extent current?

 

In 2018, the IAACC Pablo Serrano hosted the exhibition “Miguel Fleta. The man and the myth”, curated by Sergio Castillo and Alejandro Martínez.