The song speaks of someone who is almost twenty years old, of a home behind a barbed wire border, of a march towards freedom that ignores a voice, of a chest from which crimson flowers sprout. The metaphors of “Libre”, immortalized by Nino Bravo (1944-1973), seem to fit perfectly with the story of Peter Fechter, the young man from East Germany who was shot to death in 1962 while trying to cross the Berlin Wall. For years it has been believed that this coincidence is the real inspiration for the song. But it is not.
The Argentine president Javier Milei, for example, went so far as to explain in 2020 that, when Bravo intones the verse “On his chest crimson flowers / they sprang up incessantly“, referred to the blood that came out “everywhere” from Fechter’s body after being murdered: “The song is made in honor of Peter Fechter,” he said then. Recently, he performed the song in a rock version during a concert he gave himself in Buenos Aires. On stage, the images of the Berlin Wall falling reinforced a story that belongs more to myth than to reality.
The myth About the origin of the song began to circulate over time and became established in popular culture. The first authorized biography of Nino Bravo, published in 2022 with the title Nino Bravo: voice and heartstates that after the artist’s death (1973) many magazines published reports about his life and his songs, and among them the urban legend flourished that “Libre” was based on the story of the young German who tried to cross the Berlin Wall. “[La leyenda fue] elevated to the category of quasi-truth today,” writes author Darío Ledesma de Castro.
Videos of the song circulate on YouTube that show a boy running down a street and jumping over a barbed wire fence, while a soldier shoots him in the back. These images seem to fit the verses interpreted by Bravo and reinforce an inaccurate epic that some media and publications continue to repeat as truth. “According to the most popular theory, the song Libre by Nino Bravo is inspired by the story of Peter Fechter,” say various entries on websites and social networks.
- José Luis Armenteros and Pablo Herrero are the authors of the song.
The latter denied in 2021 any relationship with Fechter’s death. In an interview with Radio Nacional de España (RNE), he clarified that “Libre” was not inspired by the Berlin Wall, but by the “lack of freedom” of Franco’s Spain: “We didn’t have to look at Germany. We were living it here.” He added that the song “was the product of a rebellion” of a generation born after the war that lived through the dictatorship “based on good” and strong repression until 1975.
- The dictator Francisco Franco died on November 20, 1975.
Ledesma de Castro, author of Bravo’s biography, recognized ABC who does not know exactly how the legend was created: “I suppose someone saw the similarity between that story and the song, and launched the theory on the Internet back in 2003. The press picked up the baton and since then it has been published every year on the anniversary of Nino and the anniversary of the Berlin Wall, taking it as a fact.” Nino Bravo’s official website admits that it is still often published in the media that “Libre” was based on Fechter’s story, but states that there is “nothing further from the truth.”
Appropriations. Milei has not been the only Latin American leader who has appropriated Nino Bravo’s song. The Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) turned it into an anti-communist anthem. According to an article by Josefina Lewin Velasco, published in Counterpulsea Latin American magazine of popular music studies, the Chilean regime replaced the original meaning and intention of the song with a reading related to the authoritarian ideology.
- “Libre—originally conceived as a critique against the Franco dictatorship—became an anthem of the Chilean dictatorship, tracing the specific meanings that were imposed on it during this new regime of meaning,” the publication notes.
Initially, the song was used by political prisoners detained in the National Stadium in Santiago. Chilean researcher Katia Chornik, from the University of Manchester, reports that prisoners sang it when the guards were preparing to release some of their fellow prisoners. “Free was a catharsis: a mixture of joy for those who left and hope for those who stayed,” according to a testimony collected by the researcher.
- It is also said that the leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, went so far as to censor Bravo’s song for considering it an anti-communist anthem. But there is no evidence to support this fact, so it could also be a myth.
