“Free, free to express what I feel in my heart and I don’t have to shut up.” The letter has been written and published since 1989, and does not allow to deduce a superlative literary expertise, but some (and let’s not say) would be excited thinking that there is no more emotional way to turn on the wick from the very heart of the self -proclaimed land of freedom. The first verse of Hey my song He resonated in the Plaza de Colón at 13.08, with reasonable punctuality and just three minutes after the main promoter of this free concert of Gloria Estefan (for the public, not for the regional coffers: 480,000 euros), the regional president Isabel Díaz Ayuso, accessed the VIP area in front of the stage and sketched a shy smile while preparing the conspired self. hubby. That neither were as effusive as we might think of such a significant enclave, an epicenter of that Madrid that is “Spain within Spain” (which means that).
Is it worth a concert of Gloria Estefan in 2025? Reasonably, beyond the Havana superstar settled in Miami, it takes the entire 21st century – which is no longer a newborn – several light years in terms of success and popularity of what we knew in that inflection between the eighties and ninety years.
The most exportable Latin music queen, the artistic and marketing mirror in which Ricky Martin, Jon Drying, Chayanne, Chayanne and almost all the names that suggests the algorithm would end up before or later, retains at 67 years the powerful and precise voice, dance in moderation and tino reasonable and, above all, it displays on the scene until the scene until the scene until the scene until the scene of 16! Cash, with generous percussion sections, second voices and a quintet of winds, so that its simple and very well manufactured sauce expands through the square with all its splendor. And, regardless of the sound affinities of each one, these efforts are appreciated in the era of verticalized concerts of Instagram (and worse).
Estefan has just published a new album, Roots, After long periods without giving signs of life. If they did not know this detail or their 12 cuts have just been heard, they do not feel overwhelmed by the position of conscience: she is the first to overlook the new elepé, beyond Chirriqui chirri (With Nathy Peluso in the vinyl and as an unexpected guest star during the last sigh of the song) and the “respect of each other and the pride of where we come from” that expresses the ballad that gives it a title.
The interpretation of that Roots He would arrive at half an hour of Matiné, just after Díaz Ayus I like fruit On the back. The president praised before the cameras the occurrence with the thumb in high: there is no way to celebrate and recognize the ingenuity, hear, and through the noble zone, abundant ingenious people.
A man was wrapped with a Cuban flag and a hat of Stop communism To guarantee the unwavering love of local and autonomic prebostes for diversity, either in the days when municipal cameras work through the streets or in the programming of their irreproachable public TV. A photographer snapped at the popular leader a “come on, that you have to get it”, without clarifying very well what (although it may not be much imagination). Actually, it deserved much more to take a look through the first row of the public, full of noble, beautiful and humble people, with middle Latin America flags and, in the case of a woman on the left side of the stage, even with a doll of her idol turned into a kind of Barbie.
The problem is that the generous zone limited for guests moved the public away from the stage, despite the excellence of sound. And between the distance, the unusual heat for this time of the year (23 degrees in the shade, but with the sun falling to lead) and the lack of fervor of free events, we had to wait for the arrival of the deserved deserved exit of My land, After almost an hour and fourth show, so that that languor was fading that by then had taken over the crowd, perhaps more pending, at 14.20, of the punctures of hunger than of the centrifuged of hips.
The truth is that the “Queen of Latin Music” complied with what could be expected of it: a generous spectacle in duration and ingredients, an unequivocal commitment to a trade that has been exercising for more than half a century and enough moderation and good judgment to not step on puddles or get into eggplant. Or rather on the contrary: just before giving way to Free Cuba, his only piece of remotely political theme, the interpreter of With the years I have left, forbidden heart y Your photograph She recalled that her husband, Emilio Estefan, “opened the doors in Spain” before joining Miami, and reasoned: “We all know what immigrants contribute in the world. We are human beings and we all want the same.”
Perhaps his mentor was choking at that time alcohol without alcohol, although before that he had already had to listen: “You have to love people from other places, even if we don’t understand them.” All an aldabonazo (involuntary) against the flotation line of that apology of xenophobia according to which it would be necessary to “prioritize immigrants with cultural affinity.”
To top unforeseen ideological, Estefan granted a few minutes of prominence to her daughter, the singer and excellent percussionist Emily Estefan, who, before expanding with a potpourri of “empowered women” (from Billie Holiday to Alanis Morisette, Lisa Stanfield, Celia Cruz or Chaka Khan), recalled her sexual orientation with a “I like women.” Precisely to recognition of the State of Israel, as in some delusional Zionist argumentary we have heard in recent weeks.
Gloria presented her offspring as “one of the best artists I have met in my whole life”, in the same way that he also presumed as a husband with all the legitimacy of the world. Although he slid a small chascarrillo about it: “This September we turned 47 years old and 49 together. There was a year in which he was my boss (in Miami Sound Machine), but now they say that the boss is me …”.
In the end we had to wait until three o’clock, after almost two hours of music, to fire the queen and her nourished troupe. A woman still in good artistic form, perhaps better than many would have predicted, and cordial enough to distribute parabienes, praise “to this Spanish language that unites us” and even memories for Pola de Siero, the Asturian land of her grandfather. And all this from Columbus and not around the door of Alcalá (how would it have not occurred to you before, Miguel Ángel?), With good organization and without great tightening.
In view of the events, we will have to agree that the hiring of the great Cuban vocalist for the faces of Hispanity was not a bad idea (and less is that of Babasónicos, this Friday at the Puerta del Sol). Who was going to say it?
