Vainica Doble was a Spanish pop music duo that was active between 1971 and 2000, formed by Gloria van Aerssen (1932-2015) and Carmen Santonja (1934-2000), and had a considerable influence on Spanish independent pop music. Although their artistic activity was always outside the major record labels, in the late seventies their songs and their attitude attracted the attention of several independent musicians who would form the so-called new wave of Spanish music. Carlos Berlanga and Fernando Márquez, especially, later brought Vainica Doble closer to the new indie music groups, such as Le Mans, La Buena Vida, Nosoträsh or Family, some of which also recorded for Elefant Records, the company that released the duo's last album. The group released their albums through eight different companies.
Carmen Santonja and Gloria van Aerssen met by chance at the University of Madrid. Gloria was studying Fine Arts and Carmen was at the Conservatory studying piano. They began to collaborate musically in 1966, after the Benidorm Festival, when Gloria suggested to Carmen that they should start composing, as she considered the songs presented in Benidorm to be mediocre. Later they made their anonymous debut in a 1969 Marisol film, Carola de día, Carola de noche. Through Enrique de las Casas, an executive of Televisión Española, they came into contact with the group Music Son and contributed some songs to their repertoire, including Lágrimas de cocodrilo, which was broadcast on television.
The duo's next job is to compose a theme song and several songs for the television series Fábulas, a project by Jaime de Armiñán. This leads them to collaborate with musicians and arrangers and to shape their first professional work as a duo that sings and composes. They get in touch with Pepe Nieto, who is producing a group called Nuevos Horizontes, to which Carmen and Gloria contribute four songs: El afinador de cítaras, Las cuatro estaciones, Mi mosca favorita and Mi churumbel. While composing songs for the group's new singles, they meet film director Iván Zulueta and prepare three songs for his film Un, dos, tres, al escondite inglés. After this experience, Nieto proposes them to record a single under their own name. From a long list of names, they finally choose Vainica Doble. The single, recorded with the Columbia label, includes the songs La bruja and Un metro cuadrado, which many years later would be covered by Los Planetas. The album goes unnoticed by the general public, but a small group of fans receive it with enthusiasm.
Then they collaborate in a new season of Fábulas, accompanied by a group called Tickets (from which Asfalto would emerge), which would include in its first single a song by Vainica Doble titled El rigor de las desdichas. At the end of their contract with Columbia, through Pepe Nieto they contact Manolo Díaz, who runs the recently created Ópalo label. Again with Tickets, they record a single titled Refranes, a song that is again the theme song for a television series. In 1971 they finally record their first full-length album, Vainica Doble, produced by Manolo Díaz. It includes such surprising themes as Guru Zakun Kin Kon, the story of an extraterrestrial dragon that comes in contact, traumatically, with the human species. Once the album was finished, the company had problems with censorship because of the song Quién le pone el cascabel al gato, in which they wanted to see an allegory about Franco.
In 1972 they recorded a Christmas album containing two songs in which Aguaviva, from the same label, collaborated: Oh Jesús and Evangelio según San Lucas. It would be the last work of Vainica Doble for Ópalo. After the closing of the company, they signed with Ariola and for this label they released Heliotropo, an album with a more elaborate production, with orchestral arrangements and the artistic direction of Pepe Nieto. This album includes group classics such as Habanera del primer amor and Elegía al jardín de mi abuela. With this album they made some of their few live performances, in Morocco and Bourbon St. They composed the theme song for the TV series Tres eran tres and performed in the children's program Hoy también es fiesta. In 1975, José Luis Borau asks them for the soundtrack of his film Furtivos. They signed with the record company Gong and in the summer of 1976 they recorded their next album, Contracorriente. Their most popular song is Déjame vivir con alegría, with a surprising sitar arrangement. Dissatisfied with the final production, they disappear from the scene.
In 1980 they return to the recording studio. From these sessions comes the album El eslabón perdido, in which they recover several television songs and forgotten themes and add some new melodies. In 1981 they released El tigre del Guadarrama, with a dark and critical atmosphere. In songs like Crónica madrileña they give their peculiar rock vision of the nascent Movida madrileña. In 1984 they released a double album entitled Taquicardia, an intriguing and very experimental comeback. That same year they create and perform, together with Joaquín Sabina, the theme song for Con las manos en la masa, a TVE program presented by Elena Santonja, Carmen's sister. In 1997 Carbono 14 is released, with which the record company tries to channel them towards a massive public. It turns out to be their best-selling album, but also the one their fans appreciate the least.
In 2000 Vainica say goodbye definitively with En familia, recorded on the independent label Elefant and without any commercial pressure. It includes the ballad Dices que soy and the specialized press hails it as one of the best of the year. Carmen Santonja died in Madrid at the age of 66 on July 23, 2000, and fifteen years later Gloria van Aerssen died at the age of 83 in a hospital in the town of Cercedilla (Community of Madrid) on October 22, 2015.
