Indeed, Bad Bunny does not sing. It is 8:05 PM on Saturday, the sun still does not want to leave, and Benito has just burst onto the stage elevated by a platform. He remains silent for one, two minutes, savoring the view, a packed Metropolitano Stadium in Madrid with 64,000 people. The Puerto Rican slightly turns his head, draws a half smile, and contemplates his work: people jumping, thousands of spectators shouting. And the music hasn’t started yet. Phones record, mouths open. “This has started well, damn,” describes a compatriot fan of the star to his companion, both standing in the stands wearing caps with the Puerto Rican flag. Benito wears an impeccable cream suit and sunglasses not fully tinted. He still does not speak. Then, he grabs the microphone and shouts: “A round of applause for mommy and daddy…”. An extensive brass band, maracas, or percussion, all uniformed, drives scorching salsa rhythms and, now yes, the protagonist begins to sing La mudanza with a voice full of promises: “No one gets me out of here, I’m not moving from here. / Tell them this is my home, where my grandfather was born.” A warning that is unnecessary today, here and now: no one wants to be “taken out” of this stadium, in the next two hours and 50 minutes, everyone did what Benito wanted.
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The Metropolitano Stadium experienced one of the hottest nights in its still short history. Perhaps its stands only witnessed a similar earthquake, caused by energetic leg movements, when Atleti thrashed Madrid 5-2 this season. But yesterday, the shakes followed rhythmically: to the sound of salsa, reggaeton, mambo, Caribbean rumba, dembow, plena, boleros… The biggest star of global pop fulfilled the first of his 10 scheduled nights in Madrid, after two days in Barcelona a week ago. If all are like the one experienced last night, the Puerto Rican will leave behind a life much happier than we had.
Few massive performances like this Saturday’s, where the audience, mostly young, did not feel like just another extra in the show, but a protagonist, because the interaction between what happened on stage and the audience was a spectacle in itself. Not only could the vibrations be felt, they could almost be seen and touched. But let’s go step by step.
The concert took place on two stages, one central with a huge horizontal screen, located at one end of the venue, and the other, the famous Casita, smaller.
The first part lasted 45 impetuous minutes of Caribbean rhythms with musicians blowing trumpets and pressing timbales, attacking songs like Callaíta, Baile inolvidable or Nueva Yol, reminiscences of the classic Boricuas who set fire to the Big Apple with salsa and boogaloo back in the 1960s. Because Benito is a 32-year-old guy who lives in the present and knows it’s worth traveling to the past to find something you can’t find in the future.
At the fourth song, he stated the recital’s goal: “It feels nice to be back in Madrid. The only reason for this show is for you to have a good time.”
This initial phase sounded sensational with the incandescent orchestra Los Sobrinos, formed by young people recruited from Puerto Rico’s public schools. Benito’s voice, hot and energetic, led the show at all times.
After this first salsa phase, attention focused on the other stage, La Casita, located right in front of the main one, a recreation of a traditional Puerto Rican house that became a space for the overacted posing of influencers and celebrities who immediately filled their social media accounts with videos and photos. Night fell there, and Bad Bunny, this time in sportswear, unleashed his reggaeton repertoire, with prerecorded music fired by a DJ: Veldá, Tití me preguntó, Neverita, Voy a llevarte pa PR, Yo perreo sola… Benito sang and jumped mixed with a string of well-conditioned male and female bodies from the gym. Someone saw actress Ester Expósito there with her boyfriend, Mbappé. Then, the protagonist climbed to the rooftop of the house and there, alone, directed the crowd at will.
He demonstrated throughout the evening an art for leading the audience, moving plastically with a combination of elegant flattering flourishes to then adopt the arrogant hip-hop pose, walking with bent legs and hitting his chest with his fist. He acted as a Latin dandy capable of seducing the whole family and leaving without paying for dinner.
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At La Casita, he made one mistake, the only one all night: he spent too much time greeting the fans surrounding the stage, and for the rest, the majority, the wait without music became long.
Back on the rooftop of the house, the party quickly returned. When he sang his first hit, Diles, from 2016, and saw that the whole stadium knew the lyrics, he exclaimed: “Thank you for believing in me from day zero.” The atmosphere was unstoppable, with the whole stadium infected, Puerto Ricans teaching Spaniards how to perreo in a very funny image. “If you leave without having perreado, it means you haven’t been here. I want to see Madrid perreando,” Benito joined the party. The guest arrived next, also Puerto Rican Myke Towers, and they sang Adivino as a duo.
He chose to close the La Casita part with the joyful Café con Ron, with Los Pleneros de la Cresta beating their tambourines. “All of us here today are Puerto Rican men and women,” announced the artist, while the chorus of Los Pleneros encouraged: “In the mountain, today it breaks, from sunrise to sunset.”
The two communication channels offered by the Puerto Rican last night emerged, on one hand, through rhythm, that ancestral rite to which every human being attends, and on the other, a message of optimism despite the blows life deals. A vision centered on defending roots, in this case his Puerto Rico, but one that is not alien to any inhabitant of this complex current world. And with a call to resistance: what is called “hopeful pessimism,” crying while dancing or dancing while crying.
With those weapons, the concert displayed overwhelming rhythmic richness. Impossible not to be swept away by this park of musical and visual illusions, a huge show designed for stadiums.
He returned to the central stage to finish the show with songs like Ojitos lindos, El apagón or an emotional Debí tirar más fotos. There he took the opportunity to expose his philosophy, as basic and recurring as it is shared: “Don’t forget to enjoy the simple things in life, like singing, dancing with the people next to you, the people who love and care for you. Let’s enjoy the now, the past is gone. We learn from it. Let’s not hold grudges for things that happened, for mistakes anyone can make. And don’t worry so much about what might happen tomorrow, no one knows what will happen tomorrow. What we can do is enjoy today, the now, the moment. And as the song says: As long as one is alive, one should love as much as possible.”
Here he asked the people for an impossible mission, which he achieved, to put their phones in their pockets. And there, he returned to the chorus of Debí tirar más fotos. The concert closed with Eoo, a reggaeton hit to dislocate hips. Some almost ended up in traumatology. On the screens appeared a word in huge typography: “Perreo.” And Benito disappeared.
The people left heading to the metro, dancing, hugging, chanting a message that sums up what was lived: “I should have taken more photos of when I had you. I should have given you more kisses and hugs as many times as I could.”
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