Shakira says her Madrid residency answers Latinos forced to live in fear

Shakira has set out why her Madrid residency exists, and the answer is not simply that the Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran tour needed somewhere to land. In an opinion piece for El Pais, the Colombian singer framed the run as a deliberate response to how Latinos are being treated.

"This began with pain. It began when I saw our people persecuted simply for being Latino, families forced to live in fear," she wrote. Anger would be a legitimate reaction, she argued, and she chose a different one: "I chose to respond with a celebration: the biggest we could possibly imagine."

She did not name where the persecution is happening, which leaves the piece pointed without being a specific accusation. She was more direct about why Spain, saying Latin American immigration there is celebrated rather than tolerated, and that the country has been made younger and more creative by it.

The scale is unusual even by residency standards. The shows take place at a purpose built venue called Shakira Stadium inside the Iberdrola Music complex, with capacity for more than 50,000 people a night across 12 dates from September 18 to October 11.

Around the stadium the production is building what she describes as a city: thirty acres of exhibitions, talks, workshops, food and shared cultural events involving more than a hundred artists. The design takes its cue from Macondo, the fictional town in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, which places the whole thing inside a latin literary tradition rather than a touring one.

Residencies have become a way for pop acts to stop moving without stopping working, though they usually mean a casino theatre rather than a purpose built stadium. Recent ones have been less durable, with Morrissey calling off his Las Vegas run a week out and Barry Manilow pausing his. Dates are tracked on the tour guide.