“Burriquito” (1971) – Peret * Produced by Juan Pardo * Written by Peret * 45: “Burriquito” / “Que Cosas Tiene el Amor” * Label: Ariola * Charts: Der Musikmarkt (Germany), #1 (2 weeks); Stichting Nederlandse Top 40 (Netherlands), #1 (7 weeks).
Peret (born Pedro Pubill Calaf) was the first big face, name, and voice of Catalan Rumba, the guitar- and clap-driven flamenco sound that became the backing track, in the late sixties and early seventies, to Spain’s booming status as a tourist destination. The widening up of Spain’s doors to outsiders by the heavy-handed Franco regime, however, didn’t ease up on the stifled cultural production for the country’s minorities. Peret, then, only released a few songs in Catalan during his heyday, with all of the rest being in Spanish.
This particular situation, in fact, sheds light on Peret’s biggest song, “Burriquito” (little donkey) which one first encounters as being brazenly meaningless (and possibly a goof on “Blame It on the Bossanova.”) The implication of the title term is “dumb,” and when you watch the video of him along with a troupe of dancers doing routines in the streets of Ibiza with funny costumes and their bodies making letter shapes, you assume they’re just doing their best to keep things bizarre. “I’m a donkey like you,” he sings, enunciating vowel sounds like a mock nursery school lesson.
Peret’s own words, though, in a documentary called Yo Soy La Rumba, indicate that the whole “Burriquito” exercise had a language identity motive. He says he was “thinking about those people [in Spain] who didn’t want to seem like they were from here, who made songs in English.” This implies he’s playing the fool to those English singers who are looking for bigger audiences, also poking fun at them, and also adding commentary to his own decision to sing in Spanish and not in Catalan.
Curiously, the song didn’t top the Spanish charts, but spent several weeks atop the Dutch and German ones.