Eight years later, Shakira is back in Spain. The singer's return, who has not performed in our country since the El Dorado World Tour in 2018, will not only be with a series of concerts. The Colombian's arrival in Madrid will be accompanied by an artistic framework that complements the closing of the world tour Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran, which began over a year ago in Rio de Janeiro and recently concluded in Mexico with a free concert for 400,000 people at the Zócalo in Mexico City.
In September, Madrid will be the only stop in Europe for the singer's tour with three concerts at the Iberdrola Music venue in the capital on the 25th, 26th, and 27th. However, according to sources consulted by this newspaper, these will not be the only concerts that Shakira will have during her stay in Spain. The idea is that as tickets sell out, more dates will be added. Although the exact number is not yet confirmed, it is worth noting that Bad Bunny currently holds the record with 10 dates scheduled for this June - and 600,000 tickets sold - and one of Shakira's ambitions on this tour has been to break records in Latin music.
The concerts will not be the only event the artist is preparing for her stay in Madrid; the intention is for the Madrid venue, the same one that hosted Harry Styles' concerts in 2023 and is the venue for Mad Cool, to become a kind of city dedicated to the artist under the name Es Latina. The venue will open its doors long before the concerts, where fans will gather for exhibitions, talks, workshops, cinema, gastronomy, literature... All curated by Shakira herself, who returns to Spain with a tour for the first time since her highly publicized separation from footballer Gerard Piqué - the song against him is the one that gives the tour its title - and after her tax issues.
In a preview of the interview that will air next week on the TVE late-night show Al cielo con ella, the singer already announced that something called the Shakira Stadium will be built in Madrid, although no further details are available. What has been seen at previous stops on her tour in Latin America and the United States is that the singer brings a huge stage surrounded by screens, accompanied by a long catwalk, as was the case at the GNP Stadium [formerly Foro Sol] in Mexico City or at the Olympic Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, where the singer ends her concert among the audience with her dancers.
Tickets for Shakira's first concerts in Madrid will go on sale next Tuesday, March 24th. On that day, there will be a presale starting at 10 a.m. for those registered on the artist's official website (www.shakira.com). The following day, March 25th, at the same time, there will be a presale for SMusic; on the 26th, Live Nation's presale also at 10 a.m., and on the 27th, the general ticket sale will take place through the Live Nation, Ticketmaster, and El Corte Inglés websites.
The Colombian's residency in Madrid as the only European stop on her Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran tour also serves to reinforce the capital's position as a hub for Latin music in Europe. In addition to that, there are Bad Bunny's 10 scheduled dates at the Metropolitano Stadium and Karol G's four nights in July 2024 at the Santiago Bernabéu before concerts at the Madrid stadium were halted. Shakira, on the other hand, has chosen the Iberdrola Music venue, a space that has been surrounded by controversy due to access issues in the early editions of Mad Cool held there and also during Harry Styles' concerts with attendees facing long queues and heat strokes.
Before arriving in Madrid, Shakira will make one more stop in Rio de Janeiro on May 2nd for the Todo Mundo No Rio concert, the mega-event organized by the city of Rio de Janeiro on Copacabana Beach. The Colombian will be the third consecutive woman to perform at this concert: in 2024, it was Madonna, and last year, Lady Gaga. With the Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran World Tour, the artist has achieved the highest-grossing Latin tour in history, as reported by Billboard last January, raising over $421 million and attracting over 3.3 million spectators to her 82 concerts held in stadiums across different countries.