“You need to get involved in causes”

From crowded concerts to complete solitude; from endless nights on tour to early-morning alarm calls; from the comfort of luxury hotels to the modest abodes of the Inuit community. For eight days, music star Alejandro Sanz put away his guitar and his songs and joined a Greenpeace expedition to the Arctic to draw attention to the damage that climate change and the activities of oil companies are inflicting on the area.

According to a report by the environmental group, the Arctic could lose all of its ice within the next 10 to 20 years, with serious effects on the local population, fauna, flora and economy.

A place as remote as this is one of the few locations where you are unable to find anyone who has heard of the internationally renowned pop singer. Tiniteqilaaq is a small settlement of hunters and fishermen with a population of less than 100, located in southeastern Greenland. Close by is the Sermilik Fjord, a wall of ice stretching 2,400 kilometers north to south, and covering 80 percent of the country. It was here that the singer-songwriter Sanz, winner of 15 Latin Grammy Awards and three Grammy Awards, spent eight days, and from where he spoke with EL PAÍS in a telephone interview.

“I’m going to send you a picture of what I’m seeing right now… It’s wonderful!” Sanz exclaims. “In the meantime I’ll tell you about it: I have the fjord in front of me, and around it, hundreds of icebergs that are floating away. In the distance you can see the polar icecap.”

The winters are shorter and grass is growing where there used to be ice”

His voice betrays his emotion. “Yesterday, when I first caught sight of the fjord and saw all this, I realized what a wonderful thing it is and how we are destroying it. All comparisons fall short, but I would say it’s like watching an elephant die slowly.”

This is not the classic case of a celebrity supporting a cause to improve his own image. Sanz says he has considered himself an environmentalist since early childhood. It was his mother who instilled it in him with small, everyday actions: “Alejandro, turn out the lights when you leave the room. Alejandro, turn off the tap while you brush your teeth.”

Now it’s his own children, Manuela, Alexander and Dylan, who are keeping up this environmental awareness — especially Manuela, who is already 12. “She shows the most commitment. If I take her to one of those places with bulls’ heads hanging like trophies on the wall, she starts to cry. You know how little girls are,” Sanz says.

“But showing your commitment from a five-star hotel will not do. You need to get involved and see things in person,” he adds. In Greenland, he is sharing a small living space with his wife, Raquel, and Cristina, one of his aides. He has to use a communal restroom that contains the hamlet’s only shower. He only eats what the Inuit prepare — salted fish and a bit of chicken — and spends over 12 hours a day visiting the area, trekking and talking to the villagers.

“Scientists come up with great studies, but the people who live here give you very good explanations about the consequences of climate change: the winters are shorter, the temperature is less cold, there are even mosquitoes these days, and grass is growing where there used to be ice.”

Sanz is fighting to get this area declared a “protected sanctuary” by September, a status that would prohibit oil extraction and industrial fishing in the area.

On Sunday he was scheduled to return to Spain to go back on tour. “We’re going to Almería. Talk about a difference in temperature!”

He promises that his commitment to green policies will remain strong when he is back in Spain. “We recycle everything at home, even the water. The new house in Madrid is black in order to conserve heat better. We have solar panels for water and electricity. And everything we grow on our estate in Extremadura is organic, with no fertilizers except for organic ones. I am convincing my neighbors in the area to do the same, and they’re listening.”

He admits there are still things that could be done to make the concerts more environmentally friendly, such as recycling the waste, but that, he says, is up to the organizers. However, all the lights he takes on tour are LEDs. On July 27, they will be turned on again in Almería.