Patti Smith urges Americans to vote and calls US leadership deplorable

A press conference in Oviedo

Patti Smith, the 2026 Princess of Asturias Award for the Arts laureate, spoke at the Hotel de La Reconquista in Oviedo on Tuesday, 20 October. She described the leadership of the United States as deplorable and said she felt ashamed of the current administration. She does not identify as a Republican or a Democrat and calls herself a global citizen. Some headlines name Donald Trump as the target of her remarks, while her own comments refer to the government and the country's leadership.

A call to vote

Smith said artists alone can no longer change the situation and called on citizens to unite. She argued that people hold more power than they feel they do, and that Americans should use it, stand up, join together and vote, since elections are coming soon. She asked for artists, activists and ordinary people to join in large numbers, not only in the United States but worldwide. El Periódico reported that she placed voting above artistic responses and said her country is very divided.

Faith and a 1978 accident

Smith said her mother taught her to believe in God and to pray, and that she was raised as a Jehovah's Witness. As a teenager, when she decided to become an artist, she set religion aside because of its philosophical limits, and she said she did not enjoy that. According to La Vanguardia, a 1978 accident that kept her convalescing for six months led her to read the Gospel of Matthew and return to faith. She now sees Jesus as a revolutionary who built his movement on love, and she described herself as devoted to Pope Leo XIV, whom she met in July. She said she has no structured religion, respects people who follow a faith or none, and does not consider her own path better or worse.

Spanish influences and the 50th anniversary

Smith said Pablo Picasso led her to become an artist after she saw his work at 12, and that she visits Guernica at the Reina Sofía museum whenever she is in Madrid. She also named Federico García Lorca, Miguel de Cervantes and the late Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño among the figures who shaped her. RTVE reports that her first concert in Spain took place on 20 October 1976 in Badalona, before 5,000 people, organised by the Catalan promoter Gay Mercader. That date also coincides with the birth of Arthur Rimbaud, an early influence on her. EL MUNDO, however, gives 1966 as the year Mercader brought her to Spain, which conflicts with RTVE's 1976 date. Smith recalled being in her twenties and said the sound equipment was not perfect, but the sense of change made up for it.

Schedule in Asturias

Smith arrived in Asturias on Sunday, 18 October, and met students from the Instituto Bernaldo de Quirós in Mieres on Monday, 19 October. She is due to give two concerts in Gijón, on Tuesday, 20 October and Wednesday, 21 October, at the Teatro Jovellanos and the Palacio de Deportes. The second concert was originally planned for the Fábrica de Armas in Oviedo but was moved because of weather forecasts, and its capacity was raised by 2,000 people due to high demand. She is due to receive the award in Oviedo on Friday, 23 October, and turns 80 in December.