Pablo Alborán tells how he wrote “Castillos de Arena”, the theme of the Argentine soap opera “La 1-5/18 Somos uno”

(CNN Spanish) – Pablo Alborán presented his new single “Castillos de Arena” almost a month ago. However, the song was playing much earlier in Argentina, specifically the production demo.

It was not a leak. The song is the main theme of the Argentine telenovela “The 1-5/18 We are one” broadcast on channel 13.

Alborán’s challenge of writing a song overnight

In an interview via Zoom with Zona Pop CNN, Pablo Alborán says that the unexpected request came in a phone call, which led him to work on the song in one night.

“I started to rescue some phrases that I did have that inspired me a little that impossible love that the novel asked me for. I did the theme in one night. I recorded here with the guitars, the piano, in the studio at home and I sent it. Just as I sent it, a week or two weeks later, the novel was already playing, even with the scale model,” Alborán explains.

One of the plots of the soap opera talks about an impossible love, between a girl and a priest. Under that premise, that of impossible loves, Alborán had to develop the story he tells in “Castillos de Arena”. But, is it easier to make a song inspired by a story from, for example, a soap opera, or from your own experience?

“In this case they told me impossible love. I couldn’t watch the entire series. I got carried away a bit too… brushstrokes of personal things, brushstrokes of things I’ve seen, things I read, poetry, movies that talk about this theme,” Pablo Alborán told CNN Pop Zone.

Alboran, the astronaut

The video clip for this single shows Pablo Alborán as an astronaut who, after many years, returns to Earth, and his interaction with a child who has managed to survive with the ecosystem that he himself has created.

One of the secrets of the shoot is that the child is actually two… twins.

“They are two children, they are twins. Nobody knows who is who because the children, for child protection [leyes en España], they cannot shoot more than five hours. So children who are twins always work. I didn’t know that, I discovered it for the shooting of this video”, confesses Pablo Alborán.

With the theme of the production, Alborán wanted to convey the message that children are the hope of the future. It is worth noting that Alborán He is an ambassador for Unicef ​​Spain.

“The message of this video is a child who is like the white hope of the next generation where he takes care of his ecosystem, takes care of what he has, generates renewable energy through a bicycle,” says Alborán.

“He has a little pet that he takes care of, he takes care of the plants, he waters the plants, he manages to breathe in a world completely devastated by human beings. In fact, the astronaut that I am, when he comes back, he doesn’t want to take off his helmet because He thinks he can’t breathe, because he left the earth without being able to breathe. And when he comes back, this child kind of teaches him to breathe again in a life and in a world that is completely new to him,” adds Alborán.

“Sand Castles”, the son of “Saturn”?

One of Alborán’s hits is “Saturno”. It is the most played song by the Malaga native on Spotify with more than 247.8 million plays. The theme is part of “Prometo”, Alborán’s fourth album, and in the lyrics it refers to the myth of Saturn, which in Greek mythology says that god devours his children.

But it seems that one of those children, at least musical, survived.

In previous interviews, Alborán stated that this single was precisely a descendant of that successful song. Why? He explains it to Zona Pop CNN.

“There are tints to the sound of this song that reminds me a bit of Saturn and because it is a song that has a slightly galactic production. It reminds me of these ballads that I’ve heard in movies like oblivion or bladerunner, this music that has digital percussion, that has very eighties synthesizers. It seemed to me that it reminded me a little of the production of Saturno, which has a very powerful chorus and the video clip, since both are futuristic and dystopian video clips,” said the singer.

“Sand Castles” is available on all streaming platforms.