Faking his Suicide to Promote Himself: The Bad Idea of ​​a Mallorcan Musician

The artist Miquel Roldán apologizes after announcing his retirement with a video clip in which he pretended to take his own life, a farewell letter and a ten-day isolation.

Three days of deep suffering and a thirst for uncertainty is what the Majorcan musician Miquel Roldán has caused his family and friends: he faked his suicide in the framework of a performance to announce that he was retiring from music, but he didn't explain it until ten days later. Now the protagonist has explained the story in a statement and apologized: "I screwed up. Between what I thought would happen and what happened there is an abyss for which I am solely responsible."

 

The young man wanted to mix fiction with reality to promote his latest single : "What if after publishing the video clip, I turn off my mobile phone and go offline for a few days without saying anything to anyone?", On the same day that he published the song Todavía me acuerdo de ti , he wrote a farewell letter to his relatives. In the single , the author talked about the fact that life is not always what it seems and that there were many things about the reality that he lived that everyone did not know, a fact that, added to the letter, alarmed the environment.

 

His intention, he says now, was to generate a debate about mental health. "Doubt and bewilderment were intended to grow. Not suffering ", laments the musician. Roldán has acknowledged that he was wrong, and for this reason he has written a long letter in which, in addition to publicly apologizing, he explains that, in fact, the lyrics of the supposed farewell song came to him two years before: "The 2021 I released my first album and it was supposed to be one of the happiest moments of my life, but it wasn't," he explains. According to Roldán, the publication of the album coincided with a "very complicated" situation in the personal sphere that did not let him enjoy the.

 

The artist channeled all these emotions in the song that he left parked until last summer. He also recorded most of the music video and began to think of a way to release it to the public. He says, "After what I had gone through, I thought it was a fantastic opportunity to give awareness to suicide and spark debate." The video clip, very shocking, shows at the end a shot that wants to recreate the protagonist's suicide. "And, as you must have deduced, I was playing myself months ago. It is not a true story and at the same time it is ", he admits.

 

On December 24, with the video clip completed, Roldán published the song and began to execute his plan. The farewell letter to the family - he says - was intended to be a clue to make it clear that everything was fine, a kind of escape room , the escapism game of which he declares himself a follower. But no one read between the lines or took it as a game, instead the parents thought the letter and the video clip were real. Roldán's mother went so far as to ask for public cooperation on social networks to find her son, because she thought he wanted to kill himself: "Attention, friends, we are Miquel's mother. Seriously, we can't find him and he has left us a letter of dismissal. Please if you know something, say it. We think he wants to do something crazy," he wrote.

 

Roldán believed that his friends would be able to decipher the letter and understand that it was a game like the ones he had, in fact, created at home. "Any of them who have done my escape rooms would have understood it instantly. But no one else saw the letter, only my parents and my brother," he laments. With the letter written, Roldán turned off his mobile phone and, not being aware of the alarm he was generating, isolated himself in a house he had rented in a town on the Island (Manacor), where he spent ten days without give signs of life

The anxiety of the first hours

The news of the supposed disappearance and the family's call for help spread like wildfire and in just half an hour Mallorca was looking for the boy, not knowing if he was alive or dead. His explanation is that "my friends and family went to different sites associated to me believing I might be about to take my life." In fact, it was the alleged farewell letter read by the family that most alarmed the artist's environment, since initially the majority of the public who saw the video clip doubted that it was real. However, the social alarm had already been set, he laments. "My brother did remark that maybe it was an encrypted message that truly wished to announce my retirement from music."

 

Three days after pretending to disappear, Roldán remained oblivious to the suffering he was causing and it wasn't until the evening of December 27 that the owner of the house he had rented saw the image of the artist in the media and warned him. "At that moment I already saw that things had gone too far, although I was not aware of even 10% of what had really happened," says Roldán, who the next day contacted his father with a voice message which only told him that he was fine. "The most important thing for me was that they knew that I was fine, that I had just gone to disconnect, that they could stop looking for me, that I would come back in a few days and we would talk about everything calmly, that I missed them and that I wanted them , and to thank all the people who had cared," he adds after.

 

 

Arrival at home, 10 days later

On January 3, ten days after the disappearance, the young man returned home and the family told him what had happened. "At this point. I start to comprehend what has been happening to me. As well as the reason why everyone has been hunting for my body and assuming that I have been dead since the beginning of time. that they have suffered a lot, cried a lot and the shock was very strong", explains Roldán, who admits that he made a "risky" bet and that it "went wrong". "The majority of people have been quite nice to me. But some people get angry with me even if they don't try to grab my ear. I understand all kinds of reactions and I apologize."