And another spring that has had to leave: Robe Iniesta

By Javier Sánchez · Head of Quantitative Research at GAD3

• 10 December 2025

One of today’s major news stories in Spain is the death of Roberto Iniesta Ojea our Robe, our Extremoduro. Born in Plasencia, a universal figure without ever intending to be one, he leaves us orphaned of his irreverent, raw and profoundly honest way of narrating life in all its complexity.

Much has been written and said, especially on social media, about his ability to transcend generations through his art. About his quality as a musician, a poet, a street philosopher. Robe was a free verse that emerged from the margins, with an acidic and direct style, capable of turning his lived experiences, desires and fears into art, and of making his miseries and virtues our own. He gave beauty to excess, to discomfort, to that which is rarely said out loud, even though many people think it.

Precisely The Power of Art, as one of his songs is titled, lies in that: in its ability to unsettle our conscience and place us in front of the mirror of who we are. An art that shakes my soul, that completely disarms me. That is, perhaps, one of the deepest legacies Robe leaves behind.

In his work coexist the passage of time, the fear of death, uprootedness, the complexity of love, social criticism and the questioning of the self. It is philosophy disguised as art. Through his lyrics, he taught us to recognise our imperfections, to inhabit doubt, to embrace moments of unease in the same way we embrace life. To understand that time moves forward without stopping and that this awareness confronts us with our fragility; to accept, too, that we all need something to hold on to, because the ground shifts beneath our feet.

At times, the frenetic pace of the life we share pushes us to withdraw: to focus only on ourselves, on our partner, on our close family, on those who resemble us socially, ideologically or culturally. And yet Robe was able to cross those boundaries, to speak to very different people often even to those who were opposed to one another because he did not appeal to what divides us, but to what makes us equal at the most basic level: our human condition.

And it is precisely from that shared fragility even with fatigue, withdrawal and moments when one might come to think they have “stopped believing in fucking humanity” that something essential is revealed: that we need one another. That, despite everything, the need for others does not disappear, but becomes more visible.

There are some of his verses, recorded at his home with a rudimentary camera during the COVID-19 pandemic one of the moments of greatest collective suffering in recent decades that perfectly illustrate this idea. An idea that, far from revealing weakness, perhaps points to our greatest virtue as human beings:

Time always passes by our side… and it doesn’t stay there.
And now it has turned into the past… and it does not wait for us.
And it gallops wildly towards infinity…
and I, I stay here with you.

At GAD3, we want to remember an artist capable of distancing us, even if only for an instant, from the exclusive focus on data, statistics and analysis, and of returning us to what truly matters. Because science too and especially social science needs to be pursued with passion, with a genuine curiosity to understand people, their contradictions, their fears and their desires.

For the importance of knowledge must never narrow the space for knowing how to be, how to feel, how to share, how to understand and empathise. How to care, how to accompany. Because, in the end, working with data only makes sense if it helps us to love what is human a little more and to broaden the soul.

Robe leaves us — a modern troubadour who spent his life searching for a moon and chasing the winter sun. With his departure, the sky has changed its shape.