The residency of Shakira in Madrid, with the sold-out banner hanging at her twelve concerts and with luxury guests on stage, has turned the Colombian singer into the musical star of reference in recent weeks. Now she has announced a thirteenth and final date for October 12 to bid farewell to the capital, where she will be joined by her compatriots Maluma and Beéle, the Argentine producer Bizarrap and Dani Martín. But before, she had to answer questions from David Broncano on La Revuelta.
The eagerly awaited appearance of Shakira on the Spanish Television program did not have anything to do with Rosalía’s iconic interview. The Barranquilla-born artist did not attend the La Revuelta set and summoned David Broncano to Macondo Park: a vast cultural and temporal microcity of 185,000 m2, inspired by One Hundred Years of Solitude and designed specifically to host the residency as part of her Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran World Tour.
In a time-curtailed surrealism exercise, the singer arrived an hour late to her appointment and David Broncano had to record everything that was happening with his mobile phone to generate content for the show, such as her golf-cart ride with Jorge Ponce. «I have very few interview minutes left, we’ll see if it can be aired on television or on an Instagram reel», the host commented with irony. «The trouble this woman has caused. Hundreds of thousands of people have come to see her every day. I hope I am up to her», added Broncano.
Finally, the interviewee and interviewer were able to chat for about fifteen minutes in Macondo Park, which served for Shakira to leave us with notable quotes and anecdotes. Among them, her confession about speaking Catalan with her children in Miami, her reflections on the costs of her tour, or the lesson left to her by Gabriel García Márquez.
Shakira and Catalan in private
One of the Colombian singer’s most surprising revelations was that she now uses Catalan more often since living in the United States with her children than when she resided in Barcelona. «Parlo amb els meus fills en català en Miami para que no nos entiendan mucho, cuando no quieren que nos entiendan sus amiguitos», she said playfully. And looking back on that not-so-distant period, she stated with some nostalgia that she had done «many things for love, too many».
Broncano y Shakira, durante la entrevista.
About how it has been to offer twelve consecutive concerts in Madrid, the artist boasted inexhaustible energy at the age of 49. “I just need to start putting things up and taking them down”, she commented on her absolute involvement in the entire process of this ambitious residency. And she added that when “the rest of my team at three or four in the morning is KO, I keep going”.
She also wanted to mention Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez, the inspiration for Macondo Park with his immortal work One Hundred Years of Solitude. Of her compatriot, Shakira highlighted that he was “a great friend and a Latin American pride”, and she recalled a phrase he often told her: “Either you tell me or I’ll make it up”.
Women Earn Money… but Not So Much
The interview was brief due to Shakira’s lateness, but also because David Broncano had to catch a flight for a personal matter. «I won’t hold you up for the plane, you’ll ruin me. Women earn money, but they also spend», the singer told him, referring to the costliness of her private jet, combined with the enormous expenses of a residency in which around 10,000 people participated in total throughout the project. «Between what I earn and what I spend, I stay the same», concluded Shakira.
During the conversation we could learn other family secrets of Shakira. For example, that her children have “a rabbit named Toby”, which is why at home “we never eat rabbit or duck”. She also revealed that she has had “not a single day off” during her three weeks in the capital and she could barely accompany her friends to “a store of minerals and crystals” the day before her interview with David Broncano. And she did not miss the tradition of giving the La Revuelta host something: a football jersey from her own team, with a she-wolf as the emblem.
