Credit: Met Opera

The Popular Party candidate for mayor of Barcelona, Daniel Sirera, recently campaigned at the gates of Sants Station, proposing that the railway station be named after the Catalan soprano Monserrat Caballé.

Sirera proposed the renaming to the Administrador de Infraestructuras Ferroviarias (Adif) to align with the national trend train stations being renamed after distinguished women, such as Almudena Grandes-Atocha and Clara Campoamor-Chamartín. However, the PP previously refused to do so and took a position against it.

“In other cities they have already been renamed, but not in Sants. We, from the PP, believe that there is a woman who carried the name of Barcelona around the world and to whom Catalan society has not done justice: Montserrat Caballé,” Sirera stated, concluding: “Nobody like Montserrat Caballé brought the city closer to the world. Sants is the gateway to Barcelona and should be named after her, a symbol of open and Olympic Barcelona.”

Caballé is widely regarded as a beloved daughter of Barcelona, the city where she was born on April 12, 1933. She studied at the Liceo Conservatory, and in 1950 she made her stage debut. In 1956, she made her opera debut in Basel, Switzerland.

Caballé’s repertoire was wide, performing works by Mozart, Verdi, R. Strauss, Tchaikovsky, Wagner, and Donizetti, among others. She performed with many great artists worldwide, but she had special deference for Plácido Domingo, José Carreras, and Luciano Pavarotti.

Celebrating the Barcelona Olympic Games in 1992, she performed with various singers, including Queen and Freddie Mercury–an event that further strengthened her appreciation of her native Barcelona.