I had been looking forward to this weekend, specifically Saturday night, for months. For a while I didn’t know who I was going with and I only learned where I would be sitting two days before, but I was going to Bad Bunny’s three month Residency in Puerto Rico.
I knew people who had gone, they all said it was something else, very organized and planned out to the last second. At every concert he had different surprise guests, most of them Puerto Rican, like Gilbertito Santa Rosa, Kany Garcia, Luis Fonsi, and Pedro Capo or people who had in one way or another influenced our culture. To everyone’s surprise, he brought Ruben Blades, a salsa singer from Panama who is beloved by most Puerto Ricans.
His shows had two stages, the main stage that was decorated like El Yunque, our tropical rainforest, and la casita (the small house) in the middle of the coliseum. This typical Puerto Rican house, was the stage halfway into the show, was hosting a party every night, where you could see different celebrities, from Puerto Rican to international athletes, models, actors and actresses and singers. These singers performed songs with Benito, as well as their own. From our own Tito Trinidad (boxing champion), Jasmines Camacho Quinn (Olympian and first athlete to win a gold medal for Puerto Rico in the Olympics), to Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem, John Hamm and Austin Butler. When I went on Saturday, Lin Manuel Miranda was there.
For the last part of the show, he returned to the main stage, where he performed a lot of his salsa and plena songs, accompanied by Los Pleneros de la Cresta, a local plena ensemble.
Throughout the show you could hear the audience singing along, cheering, I saw so many people around me dancing. I know that’s a common thing at concerts but this was something different, the vibe was different from other concerts. You could feel and see that every Puerto Rican in the crowd was beaming with pride and love for our island and culture.
In three months, Benito was able to bring 600,000 guests to el Coliseo de Puerto Rico José Miguel Agrelot a.k.a Don Cholito. El Choli, as the coliseum is referred to by locals, was not the only beneficiary of this event. There were local vendors around El Choli on concert nights, which made the experience feel like a party.
Apart from the concerts, there was the Seguimo’ Aquí Immersive Experience in Plaza Las Americas, one of the malls in San Juan. As you entered the experience, you saw different elements of Puerto Rican culture and history, especially selected by Benito. There were domino tables, you could walk into a typical Puerto Rican house in the mountains, hammocks, pavas, vejigante masks, pictures and facts about Puerto Rico.
This three month residency also has had a huge economic impact, bringing guests from all over the world on a low season for tourism. This impact was felt by hotels, AirBnBs, restaurants, beaches, transportation, nocturnal life, and tourism.
There were rumors going around that he might extend the residency. I didn’t believe it and he even denied it at one point but it was just confirmed that he is adding one more night, just for people living on the island. The concert will be on Friday, September 20, the eighth anniversary of Hurricane Maria, the strongest hurricane to hit the island in centuries.
This residency is something that will be talked about for years, I don’t think there has been anything like it, at least not in my lifetime, and I know there are critics out there, who haven’t sat down to really listen to what he is saying or look at the impact he’s having we really needed this right now. We have been going through a rough patch for a while and we needed this to remind us how lucky we are to live here. We need to protect our home, learn about our history so it doesn’t repeat itself, and always be proud to call ourselves Puerto Ricans.
Unstoppable María 