When Fernando García Sánchez appeared on Spanish television in 1989, polka-dot scarf knotted around his neck and a black jacket covering his bare chest, he thought the performance would be one of his last chances to show his music to the world.
Two decades later, the singer who quit music in the late 80s to focus on his family and making ends meet, found out his song Frontera del ensueño (Frontier of Dreams) had become an international hit – remixed dozens of times.
“England, China, Japan,” says García Sánchez, listing all the countries that came up when he searched for his band, Rey de Copas, online. “I saw all these songs and lots of names I didn’t recognise. And when I listened to them, I thought, this is my song,” he says, laughing. “I have no idea how it happened.”
The 52-year-old musician, based in the southern Spanish city of Jerez de la Frontera, has spent much of the past year trying to piece together exactly how his song – which was never even a hit in Spain – ended up as fodder for DJs around the world. A remix in 1990 by Dave Ball, formerly of British synthpop duo Soft Cell, for his new outfit The Grid, would have helped.
García Sánchez estimates that 26 versions of his song exist and that together, they might have sold more than a million copies.
He is also looking to settle a crucial issue: he has only ever received €10,000 for the song. “It doesn’t make sense at all. €10,000 for a million copies sold. I’m a bit confused.”
Repeated attempts at dialogue with Spain’s Society of Authors and Publishers, which manages copyright for Spanish artists, and Warner Music, who took over the contract from his old record label Dro, have left him with few answers.
Popular in southern Spain throughout the 80s, García Sánchez inked a four-record deal in 1987. Shortly after, his son was critically injured in a schoolbus accident and he set aside music to concentrate on his son’s health – shuttling him to hospitals and specialists across the country.
The money from the remixes would go a long way, said García Sánchez, as he struggles to pay his bills. “Right now I’m in a stage of my life where I need the money, and quite a bit,” he says.
Some good has come out of his discovery – he recently returned to making music, a decision partly driven by some of remixes he had heard of his own work. “Some of the versions that are out there, I would have never approved them.” He declines to give specific examples, saying only “everything is a question of working on it, as long as you have the right people.”
García Sánchez has often been compared to 1960s American musician Sixto Rodriguez, whose story was told in the 2012 documentary Searching for Sugar Man. García Sánchez had never seen the film, but has heard the story of how Rodriguez had faded into obscurity in the US but was hugely popular in South Africa. “It’s a bit the same,” he says. “I just want to know what happened and get what’s owed to me.”
