Born into a working-class family in a south Madrid neighborhood, he grew up with a keen sense of social honesty that naturally wove itself into his poetry. He started composing at seven, inspired by raindrops tracing lines on a windowpane, and that early spark has guided both his art and his life ever since. His love of literature came from parents who cherished books, and his grandparents taught him to take pride in where he began. His mind, described as thick and curly like a lush, fertile forest, hosts poems that resist prejudice and free themselves from constraints. He studied at the Sorbonne, hosted one of Spain’s rare television programs about literature, and in his latest poetry collection, Cherries in Death, he revisits memories to revive the voices of exile. Mario is a working-class poet who both builds and deconstructs.
What is poetry to you?
I think it relates to the shape of the earth. It is an attitude that prepares us to see the other side that Lorca spoke of, the opposite, the sheets that make us, as Benjamin discussed. Whoever has the sense of this page, whether he writes or reads, is a poet and lives through poetry.
So how do you exist in the world through poetry?
You carry your own attention. Poetry helps you care, observe, listen, and attention itself challenges a prevailing, homogenizing logic. In that moment you discover an accumulation of liberated consciences, not merely hidden, but audible in their resistance.
What is the difference between hiding or saving them?
To hide is to flee, as if one were so fragile that refuge in a small space is necessary. Poetry is often small and unglamorous, always aligned with those on the losing side, yet it never hides. A poem, in its modesty and absence of macho bravado, dares to see things differently and remains brave because it refuses to conform.
This is an ethical stance.
Yes, and poetic courage is fascinating precisely because it resists patriarchy. It isn’t about planting a victory flag; it is about hearing what others do not hear. Sometimes there is no noise at all because the truth is so contradictory.
In what sense?
Banks provide mortgages, finance firms offer shares. I contribute nothing tangible to anyone in economic terms. Yet when one gives voice to a poem, one positions oneself at the center because it matters that someone who wrote that poem exists. It is better to listen and be heard than to force sounds into the world. When discussing poets in bookstores, names like Luisa Carnés, Ernestina de Champourcín, or Josefina Latorre are rarely foregrounded; they had voices too, and it is we who must listen.
What about politics?
Poetic awareness does not hinge on political consciousness. There are struggles I identify with, but I do not tether the poem to them, lest the poem be tamed and led on a leash, like a small dog.
You wrote, are you afraid of losing your freedom?
I refuse to become a disaster expert. Poetry has endured in prisons and under dictatorships here and elsewhere; it will not vanish now. If freedom and the capacity for poetic logic have survived when the pressure is greatest, they will still endure. Fear exists, and one can knit with language instead of poetry, yet hope remains. When someone enters poetry, that person draws others in, cares for them, and can call each by name.
So who is Mario Obrero?
It would be nice to say Mario Obrero is content with friends, shares a partnership, or wanders through the Debod temple or into a bad movie. Poetry should not be equated with Olympus. Work matters, but the poetry that arises from books, travels through streets and parties, beyond the sociology of poetry, resides in a small room on the wings of human thought. It can be expressed with joy, celebration, and sometimes nothing more than a sheet of paper, a pen, and a poem, a prize, a print, a demonstration, a reading, or a speech.
Beyond poetry, music also plays a vital role. For example, what is the relationship with the beloved copla?
In recent writings, I have grown fond of letting all sounds breathe without hierarchy. My grandmother Carmen’s words feel as important as what María Teresa León penned, because they touch on similar themes in different tongues. If not for the varied languages, we might still sing Coplas until the day of a loved one’s death. I am learning to live with the copla—something I have heard about for years but did not fully let in, and now it defines me in many ways.
Why does it describe you?
Copla derives from the Latin copula, a word connoting union. Calling something so popular sinful reveals a lot of good in it. It matters to me that we have labeled it that way, because the couplet has sometimes occupied heretical space, and I am a heretic in other ways as well. The political rhetoric surrounding Copla in this country cannot be ignored. Miguel de Molina was the most listened-to singer in Spain in his time, yet he was exiled after persecution. Juanito Valderrama’s legacy includes both rebellion and songs to Franco. Poetry has the power to rework symbols and meanings; if Pessoa claimed everything is a symbol and a metaphor, then poetry can recycle it and invert dominant readings. Resistance against oppression is resistance against fascism in our history.
Sometimes poetry is linked to humus and soil. If humility flows from humus, how can a poet remain humble while wrestling with ego?
That is tricky. Naomi Ginsberg once told her son Allen not to get lost in nonsense. The tension between humility and ego lies in the ridiculous, in everything beyond the literary, in resisting commodification. One must know what belongs to one area and what belongs to another. Be wary of naive reviews, for puritanism is not a path to ethical honesty simply because it carries a class bias. Pride in belonging to the working class places one in history where many ancestors worked—grandmothers as seamstresses, grandfathers as carpenters.
How important is memory, not only in your work but in life itself?
When a bestselling author appears on a popular show to write about the 16th century, the appeal makes sense as fiction. But when a young person foregrounds historical memory, the question is why, if they did not experience it. Why should reminiscing about events eighty years past feel relevant, or is it simply a literary device for talking about events centuries old? The tension grows when a young mind asks why.
I think the origin lies in a historiography rooted in a Francoist sociological view that still shapes memory here. Don Pelayo feels closer to home than Federica Montseny or the abortion law; 1937 remains a touchstone. I am intrigued by the transition years, discussing 34, 36, and 70. As citizens of democracy who cannot speak only from family kitchens, I am more interested in what we have decided in 2023 about memory, a living issue that touches every corner of our society. Memory is a poetic discourse. In my case, it surfaces through vast anomalies, such as the disappearance of 114,226 people in our country during the period and the discovery of 13 mass graves.
Is he still Atleti?
I’m from Atlet as well, so memory feels shared. As a child, stories about my grandfather came in two halves: sometimes he would sneak into the Metropolitano to watch Atleti games, other times he would beg on the street in Yeserías. Heads would be shaved, cold water dashed over them. Those moments stitched a powerful class-conscious knot in me, linking two worlds that seemed separate.