Paco Ibáñez en el Olympia was a double album recorded live at the famous Parisian theatre in 1969. It has since become one of Spain’s great classic albums, and a window into a very particular time and place in the country’s recent history.

Ibáñez (b. Valencia, 1934), had been banned from performing in public in his country of birth, due to his openly oppositional stance to the Franco regime. The gig at the Olympia was full of young Spanish dissenters, mixed with many of the same feverish French university students who had been at the era-defining May ’68 Paris riots (seen Bertolucci's film The Dreamers?).

As a musical artist, Ibáñez was greatly inspired by the chansonnier George Brassens, a truly influential figure for several generations of Spanish cantautores (politically minded singer-songwriters), who adopted his style of acerbic social commentary in songs that were also witty, humourous and catchy.

Ibáñez gave Spanish lyrics to some of Brassens' tunes, and also set to music the work of many classic Spanish poets, both old and contemporary. Among the latter was Gabriel Celaya and his powerful poem La poesía es un arma cargada de futuro (Poetry is a weapon loaded with future), a title that could sum up Ibáñez's whole attitude to music and song: "Poesía para el pobre, poesía necesaria como el pan de cada día...".

Listen up for some vivid poetic language and for Ibáñez's own voice reminiscing on his childhood among cows - his first ever audience - in the Basque countryside, his discovery of Brassens and that famous night at the Olympia.

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