From the Pope to Bad Bunny, ‘Madrileños’ have plenty to put their faith in this weekend
Madrid’s having a bit of a week. Multiple metro stations are closing as a precaution. Government bureaucrats have been ordered to work remotely. Meanwhile, multitudes of devout fans cram streets, squares and stadia – all for vastly different motives. If you’re a Madrileño pedestrian then be sure to wave at the many police-escorted motorcades stopping traffic this week because it could potentially be carrying the Pope Leo XIV, Bad Bunny or King Felipe IV, who is currently hosting the Prince of Monaco. Amid so many disparate spectacles and visiting dignitaries, the city’s infrastructure is being tested but such dynamism means that the city has never felt so alive.
I’ve been hearing pundits push the line that “Madrid is the new Miami” for as long as I can remember. While no one has ever properly explained what that really means, the past weekend – and the days to come – proffer a pretty compelling argument. You only have to open your ears to the Latino melodies tickling the air or look out for the plaza-filling political rallies, football fans at fever pitch and light sprinkle of religious zeal.
Last weekend was the first major stress test. More than 300,000 eligible Colombian voters living in Spain were called to the capital to vote in their home country’s first round of presidential elections. That same Sunday, Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny – the most streamed male artist in Spotify’s history – kicked off his 10-concert residency at the Metropolitano Stadium. Performing to around 50,000 fanáticos a night until 15 June, gross revenue from the marathon musical event’s ticket sales is expected to eclipse €75m. Mobilising some half a million concertgoers is fuelling a hospitality spending windfall across the city. Hostelería Madrid estimates that €28m will be spent at restaurants, bars and venues, many of which are hastily programming Latino flavours and flow-on celebrations. We all know how much Madrid loves an afterparty.
There are two notable new trends on show, too. The first points to the way savvy artists are anchoring their extravaganzas in reliable, stable and predictable places, programming extended concert series as opposed to a constant, no doubt exhausting, caravan of one-off shows. Just last year Bad Bunny performed a sold-out 31-concert residency in Puerto Rico that boosted the island economy by an estimated $700m (€600m). In 2024, Colombian superstar Karol G also sold out four successive shows in the Spanish capital. For a city that was once left out of international tour calendars due to inadequate venues, Madrid is fast cementing itself as a leading hub for Latin music in Europe.
Despite the fast-tempo spirit spreading through the streets, parts of the city are also preparing for a standstill. Fresh from publishing his first major encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, which takes a spiritual stand against AI and drew comparisons to the “Butlerian Jihad” against thinking machines in sci-fi novel Dune, the Pontiff touches down in Madrid this Saturday for three full days of papal programming.
On the same Sunday, when thousands will be rollicking their hips to reggaeton (at the Metropolitano Stadium), the Pope will preside over a mass expected to draw some 1.5 million devotees to the Plaza de Cibeles and surrounding streets. Two mighty idols holding court to two mightily different but equally enraptured crowds.
On Monday the Pope will attend the Bernabéu Stadium for a gala-like event that seems to have everyone scrambling for a sacred ticket. The resulting security operation is so stringent that Real Madrid CF’s snap elections, in which some 95,000 members will vote on whether to continue with the tenure of their club’s bombastic president, has had to be relocated from the team’s home ground to the Valdebebas training facility on the city’s outskirts.
The Pope’s visit is also big business. Figures from The Spanish Episcopal Conference put the trip’s cost at around €15m. With the additional public funding, sponsorship deals, ticket sales and private benefactors willing to pay top dollar for a private visit (potentially in excess of €1m per person according to El País), co-ordinators expect the Pope’s terse residency to accrue around €100m. Bad Bunny should be so lucky.
But it’s not just Madrid’s high-end hotels raking in the rewards. With a citywide stock of around 75,000 hotel rooms, the broad appeal of multiple, massive events has been a boon for bookings across the spectrum. “It’s unusual for two events capable of mobilising hundreds of thousands of people to coincide in the same city and on practically the same dates,” says Kiko Requena, CMO of Room Urban Hostels. The Spanish hotel group’s three Madrid locations have seen a 73 per cent, 86 per cent and 103 per cent uptick in reservations on the year previous. “We’re seeing how completely different types of travellers are competing to stay in the same areas of Madrid, something that rarely happens with such intensity.”
While economic estimates help provide pithy snapshots of the predicted scale, Madrid’s calendar-packed week isn’t all about the money. The still-unfolding story is one of conviviality, where all shades of the faithful can celebrate at the same time and perhaps find themselves happily fused. That’s because, in a city such as Madrid, a devout Catholic and a rip-roaring reggaetonero needn’t be mutually exclusive. I’ve lived in Madrid long enough to remember the night that Spain’s UEFA Euro 2012 victory coincided with the capital’s massive Pride celebrations. Not only were the major Pride parties broadcasting the big game on giant screens above the dancefloor but revellers later spilled into the streets to join the celebrations of elated football fans.
Good cities make room for everyone. They also allow space for myriad celebrations and let people thrive somewhere in the fuzzy middle. If you’re passing through a very Miami-flavoured Madrid this week, we hope to see you at one – or two, or three – of our fair city’s panoply of fun, fervour and fiestas.
The post From the Pope to Bad Bunny, ‘Madrileños’ have plenty to put their faith in this weekend appeared first on Monocle.
