Bad Bunny in Lisbon: 'While we live, let us love as much as possible'

By Manuel Ribeiro Published on 28/05/2026 - 15:21 GMT+2 Share Comments Share Facebook Twitter Flipboard Send Reddit Linkedin Messenger Telegram VK Bluesky Threads Whatsapp

If the name Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio meant little to you, it probably does now. "DMTF", "NUEVAYOL" and "El Apagón" may be the biggest hits, but Bad Bunny brings Puerto Rico’s history and culture to Portugal.

The world tour "DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS" marked Bad Bunny's debut in Portugal. After a stop in Barcelona, the Puerto Rican singer, winner of three Grammys and 11 Latin Grammys, performed for two nights at Estádio da Luz in front of thousands of fans.

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On the unofficial set list for the two concerts, Benito brought around 30 songs to Lisbon, most of them from his sixth album, "Debí Tirar Más Fotos", released in January 2025 and one of his most garlanded records. In fact, DTMF is the first entirely Spanish-language album to win the Grammy for Album of the Year and the record that cemented the global popularity of the 32-year-old singer.

Light, colour and a lot of love filled the venue over the two nights of the Puerto Rican singer's concerts in Portugal. Bad Bunny did more than sing: he also shared messages of affection and hope with the 120,000 fans who packed the stadium, dressed to the nines. "As long as we are alive, let us love as much as possible," Benito said.

At the second concert, Bad Bunny stretched out his opening greeting for several minutes. The singer and his Latin salsa band simply looked at the audience, motionless and in silence, contemplating an exuberant crowd that left the stadium reeling with light, colour and sound. "Tonight it is happening again. Yesterday was crazy. I tell the whole city, the second night is almost always better," Benito said in Spanish.

Estádio da Luz turned into a tropical island dancing salsa, under unseasonably high May temperatures that gave the Lisbon night a distinctly Caribbean feel. Almost all of the rapper's hits were played. "LO QUE LE PASÓ A HAWAii" may have been missing, but there was a special segment with a guest singer and an ode to Xutos & Pontapés. But let us start at the beginning.

On the unofficial set list for Lisbon's second night there were also tracks such as "Callaíta", "PIToRRO DE COCO", "WELTiTA", "TURiSTA", "BAILE INoLVIDABLE", "NUEVAYoL", among other tracks packed with stories of Puerto Rican struggle, chanted along to by the 60,000 fans at the Luz on night two, but do they know the stories and the meaning behind those songs?

"I think Portuguese fans, even though they know the songs, especially the reggaeton ones, are not very familiar with the political history and with the events that have been unfolding in Puerto Rico, and I believe now is the time to start talking about those issues," replied Gustavo Garcia-Lopez, a Puerto Rican researcher at the University of Coimbra, in a telephone interview with Euronews.

Euronews was at the second night of the concert and spoke to several fans.

"I know he's Puerto Rican, I know DTMF, "NUEVAYoL" and "BAILE INoLVIDABLE"," says Rosa at one of the entrances to the venue. "I know very little about Puerto Rico's history," she added.

"I know his songs and I like them a lot. I came from Mozambique just to see him, he's very humane, he does a lot for his country," said Patrícia. "I know that ten years ago he was working in a supermarket and now he's packing out stages on world tours," said Carolina.

"I really like his latest album, DTMF, and I know he talks a lot about Puerto Rico's history and that, in his videos on YouTube, he shows different parts of the country. He's someone who speaks a lot about the resilience of Puerto Rican people and tells us always to believe in ourselves," Carolina added before the concert.

It all begins with "Mudanza"

"LA MUDANZA" opened both Lisbon shows, but it also tells the life story of Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio and how, as a baby, he had to move with his parents to another city. In this track, Benito alludes to the Vieques uprisings in 1970, protests against the occupation of the island by US armed forces bases, and to the Gag Law, which banned and criminalised the raising of the Puerto Rican flag.

In the video clip, Bad Bunny weaves in black-and-white images of Puerto Ricans protesting against the US armed forces stationed in Vieques. The Vieques naval base, Roosevelt Roads, was decommissioned and abandoned in 2004. Since then it has become just a tourist attraction. It was reactivated by the Trump administration in mid-2025, under the pretext of the fight against drug trafficking, and is said to have been used for the capture of Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela. It is one of the largest naval bases outside the United States.

On the "DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS ToUr", the Puerto Rican rapper built into the show references to energy crises - "El Apagón" - and to corruption and tourism - "Turista" - which have pushed citizens into mass emigration, a theme also reflected in "NUEVAYoL" and "DTMF".

In "El Apagón", sung near the end of the concert, Benito evokes the memory of a devastating hurricane, Maria, whose reconstruction efforts sank into corruption. And with that came the ensuing blackouts on the island, which trigger anger and protests.

In "TURiSTA", the song lays bare overtourism, gentrification and the forced exodus of a diaspora determined not to lose its identity.

The US invaded Puerto Rico more than a hundred years ago

"They occupied Puerto Rico - annexed it - under the Treaty of Paris in 1898, which handed them control of Puerto Rico and forced Spain to transfer some of its last colonies," explains Gustavo Garcia-Lopez, the Puerto Rican researcher at the University of Coimbra, after attending the first of Bad Bunny's concerts in Lisbon.

Alongside the occupation of Puerto Rico in 1898, Washington also took control of the Polynesian island of Hawaii - annexed, militarised, turned into a tourist playground, gentrified - hence the song "LO QUE LE PASÓ A HAWAii", which was not performed in Lisbon, but in which Benito warns of the dangers of Puerto Rico's annexation and cultural assimilation: the extinction of boricua identity and of traditional "lelolai" music - but also of endemic species on the island such as the sapo concho, the same toad that appears in the DTMF album video clips and that popped up on the stadium's big screen to explain the particularities of Puerto Rican Spanish.

"Puerto Rican Spanish is our language. I would call it boricua Spanish, which is our origin. The island used to be called Boriquen by the Indigenous people and that is why we call Puerto Ricans boricuas, and Benito leans into that a lot in his performances, as well as into his own identity," the researcher explains. The figure of the concho "embodies an environmental struggle to save this frog, which is threatened with extinction in Puerto Rico," adds Gustavo Garcia-Lopez, explaining that one of the causes that has led to the decline of this species was the massive construction of tourist developments and the consequent destruction of green areas.

"First, Puerto Rico was turned into an agricultural exploitation zone and later into an industrial one and, because it is an island, the concentration of naval military bases turned the region into a space of geopolitical control. There were many bases, with constant exercises and military bombardments, as in the cases of Vieques and Culebra, and that caused a lot of pollution," recalls the researcher, in conversation with Euronews.

"Getting used to colonialism is a way of dying slowly"

"Getting used to colonialism is a way of dying slowly," adds Gustavo Garcia-Lopez. "This colonial situation, on the one hand, brings with it violence in the exploitation of the land and of people and, on the other, generates pollution.

And even when fans sing the lyrics in unison without understanding every word, they carry a meaning that speaks directly about neocolonialism, austerity and identity. "Puerto Rico is the oldest colony in the world," the researcher reminds Euronews. Puerto Ricans are US citizens, but only on paper, as they do not vote in elections and do not have access to basic rights. There is a great deal of anti-colonial struggle in Bad Bunny's songs.

"NUEVAYoL" was another of the night's standout tracks and also served as a bridge between Benito's performance on the main stage and in "La Casita".

"There is a strong Puerto Rican community in the United States, in New York. The song "NUEVAYoL" reflects that, it's an ode to the Puerto Rican diaspora," says the Puerto Rican researcher. It is linked to "a march that takes place every year in New York, the Puerto Rican Day Parade, which is huge. Millions of Puerto Ricans live in New York and have created their own local economy and their own culture, such as salsa, which emerged in New York together with Cubans," explains Gustavo Garcia-Lopez.

"Puerto Ricans who live in Puerto Rico have no rights and cannot vote in US elections, which means that all US laws, from the US Congress, override those of Puerto Rico. And another example [of neocolonialism] is that we pay into US social security and other taxes, but we have no access to them and get nothing in return. So there is an extraction of people's labour and inequality; because we cannot vote, we cannot change the policies," he explains.

In "NUEVAYoL", Bad Bunny refers to the diaspora, to 4 July, US Independence Day, and to Puerto Rican movements such as the Young Lords, who fought against the Vieques base. Hence the flag over the Statue of Liberty, recalling those protests by the Young Lords, who occupied it with the Puerto Rican flag.

Before stepping into "La Casita" at Estádio da Luz, one of the band's guitarists walks onto the main stage with his cuatro (a Puerto Rican guitar) and starts playing "A Minha Casinha", by Xutos & Pontapés, getting the entire stadium to sing as one.

Then came the surprise track announced by Benito, performed by Panamanian musician Sech, who climbed up to La Casita to sing "Ignorantes" with Bad Bunny and "Otro Trago" on his own.

DTMF almost at the close

"One of the things Benito does when he performs DTMF is to pay tribute to ancestral culture and, in particular, to the jíbaro, the Puerto Rican peasant with his straw hat and machete," the professor says.

"These are people who work the land, in sugar cane, in coffee and in ancestral agroecological practices, living off the soil," he continues; these references are equally present in "PIToRRO DE COCO". "Benito does this a lot and uses "lelolai", which comes from jíbaro music. And in "CAFé CON RON", performed in La Casita, he makes that reference too," he explains.

"Bringing Puerto Rico to Portugal, and that diversity of our country, from reggaeton to salsa to plena, for people who previously knew little about Puerto Rico, was very special. It was beautiful to see that at the concert," concludes the Puerto Rican professor and researcher from the University of Coimbra.

Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, who worked in a supermarket while releasing music on SoundCloud and studying Audiovisual Communication, became Bad Bunny. At 32, he is now one of the most popular voices in the world, with songs that break listening records on Spotify.

All of this, mixed into the rhythms of reggaeton and Latin trap, to the sound of bomba and plena, produces perreo, a style of dance (and of music) that was once banned (in the 1990s) but has re-emerged as a form of urban struggle and self-determination.

The struggle for Puerto Rican self-determination, stamped across the activism of his albums, contrasts with the rapper's silence on other struggles around the world and does not exempt him from taking part in events sponsored by magnates such as Jeff Bezos, or from signing multi-million-euro contracts with brands like Calvin Klein and, more recently, Zara, part of the Inditex clothing giant.

On Thursday, the rapper returns to Spain for a run of ten concerts in Madrid. Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, France, Sweden, Poland, Italy and Belgium will follow.

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