Festival Longina 2025. Foto: Alex Correa.

Longina 2025: Where love and trova are never missing

Alfred Artigas
22.01.2025
6 minutes Reading

The world needs love, tons of it. To walk this earth without skimping on it is the most radical and courageous attitude...

Ok, I started a little coelhescoI'd better focus and try to write something about the Longina, the trova (music) festival that has been filling Santa Clara with songs for 25 editions.

At the Longina the hugs are of mutual recognition, people look each other in the eyes with their eyes wide open, the songs are simultaneously listened to and sung, they are capsules of life. The guitars have no owner, alcohol even less, spaces and times are given, spaces and times are given, people are invited, people wait and wait for each other, and the reunions are exciting, portions of an almost tactile happiness.

And how is that possible? Well, spend more than 20 years doing more and saying less, preaching by example, and working with constancy, patience and a lot of love. Tell me about it later.

For this reason, I would like to give a thousand thanks to all those responsible and a tribal hug to the irresponsible ones, to see if they get their bearings with the squeeze.

That said, let's talk about this year's edition:

Although I go through life with an almost naïve optimism, it doesn't take much for me to recover the hope that the bad guys will lose the battle, so sensations like the ones we have experienced in this Longina 2025 mean batteries charged for one more season dreaming of not being as predictable as a species. Rumberos are needed, as Pedro O'Riley says. The Longina is needed.

Ariel Barreiros (right) in the Longina 2025 Festival. Photo: Alex Correa.

This festival has a certain something that is impossible to define with a couple of adjectives. An intensely subjective breakdown of causes could be this:

Santa Clara -the setting-, an oasis where, in spite of everything, one often has the feeling that there is nothing to worry about. Santa Clara, at any moment and without warning, can give you a cinematic moment: for example, Parque Vidal and its choreographic interweaving of events and people that sometimes look like a set from an old movie (or a dystopian novel).

Santa Clara and its poets, such as Yamil Díaz or Edelmis Anoceto, who stopped time reciting in Roly Berrío's peña; its punks; its music teachers, strict and demanding; its evening totíes and the owl that hunts them; its almodovarism (¿almodovarianismo?) the town that welcomed me when I arrived on this island?

The spaces where Longina takes place are an essential part of the festival and are almost more content than container.

The courtyard of the headquarters of the Hermanos Saíz Association, renovated and improved, where the evenings usually end and where this year Lucía Travieso made her debut with the -I hope estimable- help of Bori Albero, Michael Olivera and the speaker, who were passing by. The patio of the Museum of Decorative Arts where once again Leonardo García touched that point of resonance that very few know how to reach. El Mejunje de Silverio, a place that transcends definitions, and that for many of us is a temple with all the letters, where on Thursday La Trovuntivitis once again filled the stands and turned the artist-public phenomenon into a bijective application; and the Luna Naranja, another space raised on the back of a dream, where we will surely experience incredible things in the years to come, such as the concert by Michel Portela and his band, taking risks in the genre and coming out on top.

Leonardo García y Roly Berrío en el Festival Longina de Santa Clara, 2025.

Leonardo García and Roly Berrío at the Longina de Santa Clara Festival, 2025. Photo: Alex Correa.

The municipalities, always in danger of falling into the limbo of oblivion but which in this Longina of ours continue to be taken into account. So, like a multiplied Roly Berrío, no one would dare to deny a song to Santo Domingo, even with little sleep and festering from the previous night's alcohol.

Technicians, custodians, transporters, waiters, and all the other protagonists of the festival who try to help - despite everything we know - because they also feel part of something big. Constant examples. A comforting feeling.

Alcohol. The novelty this year, at least for me, was discovering a bar where they serve negronis. Questions to the private.

And the audience: the real spectacle of the Longina. What a strong and beautiful energy comes to you when you are on stage; what expressions of moment lived and enjoyed. I could see scenes of pure joy.

Audience at the Longina 2025 Festival. Photo: Alex Correa.

I saw many people listening and sharing, enjoying the musical and human details, being patient, and asking for the songs from a beautiful place. The Longina's audience is to die for, and to play for them, a privilege.

Long live the Longina and the song. Hugs and best wishes to Santa Clara and her troubadours.

And to affection... To affection all my support in these difficult moments for him.