Russian Red shows us his childhood paradise: Oliva.
What are Traveler Calls? Destiny calls? The call of life? From the trip? This new section of videos starring names from the world of culture (music, cinema, gastronomy, literature...) brings us voices with a lot to say, that guide us through very special corners, different places that embody their experiences and invite us to discover them.
In the current scenario, the photographer and filmmaker Jerónimo Álvarez proposes to pay tribute to the unbreakable spirit that has kept us united as a society, whether through traditional calls, video calls, audio calls... The obligation to keep our distance has not prevented us from pursuing a connection: between us and with destiny. Thus, Álvarez goes through his most personal scenarios with different characters, while they narrate in off their reflections and emotions about the space they describe.
On this occasion, Lourdes Hernández –better known by her stage name Russian Red– She takes us to the Valencian municipality of Oliva, where her grandparents spent "The happiest moments of her life."
“Oliva is like a fantasy, like a good dream I had, because I haven't been back since." The Madrid woman tells us, who recalls for Condé Nast Traveler her trips at six in the morning, in a red Opel Kadett belonging to her family. “We arrived at 12 noon and It gave us time to take a bath before eating.”
During the journey, she was always well equipped with her walkman, discman or, later, mp3, with which she listened to her own music, which she shared with her sister. “I remember the Grease soundtrack or the Eternal records, and how going inside the car she imagined the things that were going to happen when she arrived at the destination. We made a mandatory stop –for the sandwich they brought from home– but the important thing was to get to Oliva on time”.
At her summer destination, Lourdes befriended another girl, Ana, transforming that personal paradise of her grandparents into one of her own, as she tells us. “Ana has a house on the beach, and that is the place I think of when I think of Oliva.”
For the author of the already classic album I love your glasses, settled for years in Los Angeles, it is being a very important summer, in which she is losing many fears. “I don't judge myself, I love myself from a good place, I want to let myself be. I am more connected with intuition now".
a good time to reconnect with the place where she felt safe as a child, with that peaceful summer routine that included her grandfather coming down early to set up the umbrella in the best spot on the beach, or the walks on the beach with her grandmother, in which one day Lourdes exceeded the limit, feeling more and more adult.
“Oliva tastes like alioli, scallops and bag potatoes to me”, she underlines her, and she reminds us of that little Lourdes who looked out the window listening to music and dreaming that she was older. Is Oliva her personal paradise? "It is the personal paradise of the person I was," she replies, and she predicts that it will be a paradise rediscovered by all in the coming years. "I think he deserves it, but At the same time, I wish it wasn't like that…”.