Shakira is the author of today’s column in El País, dedicated to the reasons why she has decided to carry out a 12-concert residency in the Spanish capital. The Colombian artist will begin the string of concerts at the Shakira stadium starting on September 18. She explains that she chose Madrid because here “Latin immigration is not tolerated, it is celebrated.”
The artist says that it all “started when I saw our people persecuted for the mere fact of being Latino, families forced to live in fear.” However, he says he chose to “respond with a celebration.” This is the residency that will take place during the months of September and October in Madrid.
Shakira assures that she is not “one of those who deny the future”, but shows concern about the current times we live in and that it has “an unprecedented capacity to isolate us”: “Loneliness has become a silent epidemic that doctors already measure like any other disease,” she continues. The Colombian remembers that Latin culture “turned pain into rhythm” and during the next paragraphs she focuses on celebrating the “Latinidad” present in our country.
What Shakira wants to celebrate in Madrid is how well “it turned out for us to be so mixed”: “I carry in my blood the Spaniards who came from America, in my hips the rhythm of my father’s Middle East, and the resilience of the native peoples of this land,” she says.
Finally, the artist proposes not to speak only of Hispanicity, but of “Latinidad”, since this classification does not “fall short of everything we are”: “Spanish is Latin; Portuguese, Italian and French too,” he clarifies. This ends with a summary of all the points touched on, declaring, while paying tribute to Gabriel García Márquez, that “in Madrid we are all Latinos”, that “solitude does not have to last a hundred years” and that “the strains that learn to embrace each other do have a second chance on earth.”
