Escorted by women and children, emerging from the desert land in the visuals, Shakira appeared in Spain eight years later with the moon already in its first quarter over the Madrid sky. Like a she-wolf waiting for her pack’s howl, she kept silent. And when the pack howled, she lifted her futuristic glasses to flash a smile, accompanied by a wink of complicity to her audience. There was no doubt, she was back.
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“Welcome to my European residence. I can’t believe I’m here, it feels like a dream. Everyone calls me Shaki with the face you left and the face you returned with,” said the Colombian the first time she addressed the audience after performing her first three songs. “You don’t know how happy it makes me to have you here again because this is a huge proof of love and affection. There’s nothing like when a she-wolf meets her pack,” she emphasized before letting out the first howl of the night, which was immediately echoed by a packed stadium.
Although the show starts and ends with songs from her latest phase, a robotic and off-key La fuerte and a sweeping Las mujeres ya no lloran, the aspiration of her residency in Madrid is to transcend that phase and unfold thirty years of career in just over two hours. One after another. And to do so with hits that almost anyone would know how to sing. The current Shakira who calls all betrayed women to empower themselves and take revenge on those who abandoned them is the central point. “Alone, women are vulnerable, but together we are invincible”, she assured quoting the Chilean Isabel Allende.
Since her beginnings, with the pop rock full of spite that catapulted her in Pies descalzos, that was the discourse that sustained Shakira. And her audience seems not to have forgotten it judging by the volume at which Estoy aquí was received – turned into an electronic version -, Inevitable – held with an electric guitar -, Pies descalzos, sueños blancos or Si te vas.
Even those who had not been born in that distant 1995 sang this last one as if the piece of leather – in Spain, it would be cabrón – they had as a boyfriend had been replaced by another and now they were the ones who did not want him to ever come back. To forget him, a few minutes later they were moving their hips to the rhythm imposed by the Latin Shakira, accompanied by her dance team, which connects with the whole idea of the theme park set up in the Espacio Iberdrola in the Madrid neighborhood of Villaverde. Already in Girl like me, the second song of the show, she reviewed all the Latin nationalities gathered there, including the Spanish. This was going to be enjoyed without anything else mattering too much – except money, of course -.
The Colombian has embraced the motto that has accompanied her like an indelible mark since 2023: Las mujeres ya no lloran, las mujeres facturan. So far she has performed 115 dates since February 2025 and has grossed more than 417 million with her Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran World Tour shows throughout the American continent. From Montreal to Buenos Aires to become the Latin artist with the tour that has sold the most tickets ever, to which the 12 nights in Madrid with their 650,000 spectators who came to see the artist, yes, but also to eat something in the gourmet gastronomic space that had been set up, to take a couple of selfies in her interactive museum or to leave another pavilion styled and made up like her.
After that, and another good handful of activities that had already started early in the afternoon, all the fans, mostly women aged between their fifties and prepubescence, were ready to dance. First came some rockers Don’t bother and Can’t remember to forget you – with her on drums – and an emotional Acróstico, dedicated to her children with a couple of wolf cubs guarded by their mother in the visuals on the screen and some somewhat disturbing AI-generated images of Milan and Sasha. That was the preamble to a whole battery of danceable Latin songs that paraded relentlessly.
Empty cup and La bicicleta, with a waterfall cascading down the screen, were responsible for warming up an atmosphere that when La tortura arrived seemed about to explode. Alejandro Sanz did not come out – nor any other guest – to reunite that duo that laid the foundations of the current Latin wave in 2005 with a song that played on all US radios and was the first Spanish performance at the MTV Video Music Awards, but the power of that lyric and that dance remains valid two decades later on the dance floors.
Shakira moves her abdomen and hips and behind her go the thousands of people watching her as if possessed by that Latin pop. And the same effect continues to be generated by Hips Don’t Lie, the other anthem of perreo that closes that central part of the show with Chantaje – including a live look change – and Loca. Precisely in that stretch, dance leads the show. The Colombian’s choreographies remain as precise as they were two decades ago. Although her voice drops in some parts, the hips do not lie as she makes sure to remind on the screens: “They say that woman was born from man’s rib. From woman’s hips, man is born”.
“Everything one needs to be happy, as my father always told me, is inside oneself. That’s why my dear singles, you have to take advantage of it.
I say you can be happy being single or married, but the important thing is to be free. Love for another is very beautiful, but love for oneself is even more beautiful,” Shakira stated before launching Soltera, one of the songs that accompanied her breakup with Gerard Piqué. The Colombian insisted that there is a certain “anxiety” about women being in a relationship and that at the beginning of singleness “you are left without a compass” and doubt how to “raise your children”.
Lying on a platform, with a bedlah of shiny reds, Shakira returned for a version of Ojos así that claimed her Arab origins, accompanied by her usual belly dance. The awaited and celebrated Pies descalzos and the powerful Antología, gave way to the tribute that the Barranquilla native kept for Madrid. Te dejo Madrid, preceded by a tale of a failed love with an “Iberian specimen”, announced that the show was heading to the end at least for this night – there are still 11 more -.
For that finale, Shakira kept a classic like Suerte and her two World Cup songs: Waka-Waka and Dai Dai. And, above all, an apotheotic encore of Loba and, of course, Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran – the unofficial name of the session with Bizarrap -. That song of spite still, three years later, shoots the cortisol of those present like a traumatic breakup followed by an outburst of liberation. An outburst so deep and general that it destroys everything until it disintegrates. As if there was nothing left in the stadium anymore.
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Except for a she-wolf on the loose.
