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When we talk about making a living from music, what advice do you give your students?

Work hard, be respectful, be punctual, rigorous, be as meticulous as possible, methodology and organisation, enjoy what you do, ignore those who envy or criticise you. Perhaps the most important thing is not to think about making a living from music but to dedicate yourself fully to it and enjoy it. It is also very important to have a good radar to know how to differentiate who is your friend, who loves you out of interest and who is your "hater friend", the latter is inevitable nowadays, but the best thing to do is to keep playing or recording the best you can and thus be a pro of your thing and let them do their thing "hate"...

The COVID has made visible some problems of national professionals dedicated to music. Associations have arisen such as the Platform against precariousness in professional music, the Artist's Statute is being drafted, the UMP (Union of Professional Musicians), etc. How do you see the current situation?

Covid has caught many people off guard and has brought to light the precariousness that exists in the sector. Nowadays it seems quite the opposite, we've gone from not being able to play to being overloaded with work. In my case, I've never had my recording studio scheduled for so many months in advance, nor have I had the number of students that I have now, both in online and in-person drum lessons or mixing and mastering classes with pro tools. I don't know if it's good or bad to have so much and so little in such a short period of time. What covid has taught me is that when there is work you have to work and when there isn't you have to generate it. Ideally, everything would be more evenly distributed, but you have to adapt to the circumstances. A few years ago some people called me crazy for investing a lot of money and resources to be able to mix online in my studio while each member of a band is at home and listening live to what happens in my pro tools session. This and the fact that I've been teaching online since 2012 with 5 cameras on my drum kit and the whole set mic'd up saved me in confinement and I was able to keep working. Unfortunately not everyone was able to continue working and the ones who got the worst of it were the technicians. I think we should learn and try to prevent a similar situation, although it is obviously difficult to predict something like this. Having studied in France, I was amazed by the social benefits they have there and the consideration they give to any kind of artistic activity. We still have a lot of room for improvement, not only on an individual level but also on a social and collective level.

Now we see many more women playing the drums, is it a masculine instrument? Do you think that this concept is changing in the new generations?

Unfortunately it is still an instrument that is played much more by men than by women, but little by little more and more women are coming into the game and they are playing very well. I think that this is not only true for the drums and that we still have a long way to go. As a teacher I am very excited to teach women and although it is still a very low percentage of my students, they stand out a lot because of the coordination skills they already have as standard, so I encourage all those women who have always been curious about the instrument to jump into the pool and give it a try.

Tell us what has been your experience on stage, any special concert that you remember with pride?

Curiously the best memories I have are from the beginnings with Baalphegor where we travelled a lot of kilometres in a van around Europe when we still didn't even have GPS, we didn't know whose house we would sleep in or what we would be given for dinner (if we had dinner at all). We had a Swiss record label and we played very often there. We went on adventures and were always treated very well there. It was a bit the same with Profundis tenebrarum, a band from Valencia with whom we had very good chemistry. I remember the adventures in the UK with them and a lot of laughs and anecdotes that have remained engraved in my memory forever. I consider them my metal brothers. Another good memory would be my first concert with Soziedad Alkoholika in a quite small venue in Cuenca but full to bursting. And maybe it's not the most glamorous thing but the first rehearsal with SA made my hair stand on end. I grew up playing the songs from the black album on a wooden and cork drum that my father (a carpenter by trade) used to play the vinyl at 45rpm to play them faster. At the first rehearsal with them it was brutal to play those songs. Then I've played on huge stages in a few countries but beginnings are beginnings and I come from a working class neighbourhood where I had to work to buy  my first bike to go to work, I didn't have a motorbike until I was 17 to go to work because I spent everything on drums, chainwheels and hardware, so I value what I have and I take advantage of everything I can.