If Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio meant little to you, it doesn’t now. “DMTF”, “NUEVAYOL” and “El Apagón” may be his biggest hits, but there is far more than reggaeton. Bad Bunny has brought 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 3 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 album sung entirely in Spanish 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 spread through the venue on both nights of the Puerto Rican star’s concerts in Portugal. Bad Bunny did more than just sing, also sharing messages of affection and hope with the 120,000 fans who packed the stadium, all dressed up for the occasion. “As long as we’re alive, let’s 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 stood still, in silence, looking out at the crowd and taking in an effusive audience that left the stadium reeling from the light, colour and sound. “It’s happening again tonight. Yesterday was crazy. I’m telling 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 heat that was unusual for May and gave a distinctly tropical feel to the Lisbon night. Almost all of the rapper’s hits were played. “LO QUE LE PASÓ A HAWAii” may have been missing, but there was a special moment with a guest singer and an ode to Xutos & Pontapés. But let’s start at the beginning.
That same unofficial set list for Lisbon’s second night also featured tracks such as “Callaíta”, “PIToRRO DE COCO”, “WELTiTA”, “TURiSTA”, “BAILE INoLVIDABLE”, “NUEVAYoL”, among others with rich stories of Puerto Rican struggle, sung along to by the 60,000 fans at the second night at the Luz – but do they know the stories and the meaning of those songs?
“I think Portuguese fans, although they know the songs, especially the reggaeton ones, are not very familiar with political history and with the events that have taken place in Puerto Rico, and I think now is the time to start discussing these issues,” replied Gustavo Garcia-Lopez, a Puerto Rican researcher at the University of Coimbra, in a phone interview with Euronews.
Euronews was at the second night of the concert and spoke to some 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 Rican history,” she adds.
“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,” says Patrícia. “I know that ten years ago he was working in a supermarket and now he’s filling stages on world tours,” says Carolina.
“I really like his latest album, DTMF, and I know he talks a lot about Puerto Rico’s history and that, in his YouTube videos, he explains different parts of the country. He talks a lot about the resilience of Puerto Ricans and tells us to always believe in ourselves,” Carolina added before the concert.
It all starts with “Mudanza”
“LA MUDANZA” opened both Lisbon shows and 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 the 1970s, protests against the occupation of the island by US Armed Forces military bases, and to the Gag Law, which banned and criminalised the flying of the Puerto Rican flag.
In the video, Bad Bunny weaves in black-and-white footage of Puerto Ricans protesting against the US Armed Forces stationed in the town of Vieques. The Vieques naval base, Roosevelt Roads, was deactivated and abandoned in 2004. Since then, it has become little more than a tourist spot. It was reactivated by the Trump administration in the middle of 2025, under the pretext of fighting drug trafficking, and is believed to have been used in the capture of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro. It is one of the largest naval bases outside the United States.
On the “DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS ToUr”, the Puerto Rican rapper built references into the show to energy crises — “El Apagón” —, to corruption and to tourism — “Turista” — which have been pushing citizens into mass emigration, reflected too in the tracks “NUEVAYoL” and “DTMF”.
In “El Apagón”, sung towards the end of the concert, Benito recalls the memory of a devastating hurricane, Maria, and a recovery effort that was sunk by corruption. The result: recurring blackouts on the island, which trigger anger and protest.
In “TURiSTA”, the song lays bare excessive tourism, 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 – they annexed it – through the Treaty of Paris in 1898, which gave them ownership of Puerto Rico and forced Spain to hand over some of its last colonies,” explains Gustavo Garcia-Lopez, the Puerto Rican researcher at the University of Coimbra, speaking 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 risks of annexation and cultural assimilation for Puerto Rico: the extinction of Boricua identity and of traditional “lelolai” music – but also the extinction of endemic species on the island, such as the concho toad, the same one that appears in the videos for the DTMF album and which popped up on the stadium’s big screen to explain the quirks 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’s 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 “is part of an environmental struggle to save the toad, which is threatened with extinction in Puerto Rico,” adds Gustavo Garcia-Lopez, explaining that one of the reasons for the species’ decline was the massive construction of tourist complexes and the consequent destruction of green areas.
“First, Puerto Rico was turned into an agricultural exploitation zone and later 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 lots of military bases, with lots of exercises and bombing, as in the cases of Vieques and Culebra, and that caused a lot of pollution,” the researcher recalls, speaking to 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, entails violence in the exploitation of land and people and, on the other, produces pollution.
And even when fans sing the lyrics in unison without understanding every word, those lyrics carry a meaning that speaks directly of neocolonialism, austerity and identity. “Puerto Rico is the oldest colony in the world,” the researcher reminds Euronews. Puerto Ricans are US citizens, but that is little more than a formality, as they do not vote in US elections and do not have access to basic rights. There is a strong anti-colonial streak running through Bad Bunny’s songs.
“NUEVAYoL” was another of the night’s standout tracks and also served as the link between Benito’s performance on the main stage and in “La Casita”.
“There is a large Puerto Rican community in the United States, in New York. The song ‘NUEVAYoL’ reflects that; it is an ode to the Puerto Rican diaspora,” says the Puerto Rican researcher. It is a nod 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 culture there, such as salsa, which arose in New York along with Cubans,” Gustavo Garcia-Lopez explains.
“Puerto Ricans living in Puerto Rico have no rights and cannot vote in US elections, which means that all US laws, passed by the US Congress, override those of Puerto Rico. And another example [of neocolonialism] is that we pay US social security and other taxes, but we have no access to them and receive nothing in return. So there is an extraction of people’s labour and inequality; as we cannot vote, we cannot change policy,” 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 opposed the Vieques base. Hence the flag over the Statue of Liberty, which recalls those Young Lords protests, when they occupied it with the Puerto Rican flag.
Before stepping into the “La Casita” at Estádio da Luz, one of the band’s guitarists comes onto the main stage with his cuarto (a Puerto Rican guitar) and starts playing “A minha casinha” by Xutos & Pontapés, getting the whole stadium to sing along as one.
That was followed by the surprise track Benito had announced, performed by Panamanian musician Sech, who came up to La Casita to sing “Ignorantes” with Bad Bunny and “Otro Trago” on his own.
DTMF almost at the end
One of the things Benito does when he performs DTMF “is pay tribute to ancestral culture and, in particular, to the jíbaro, the Puerto Rican peasant with his straw hat and his machete,” the professor says.
“These are people who work the land, in sugar cane, in coffee, and who keep alive ancestral agricultural practices, living off the land,” and those references are also present in “PIToRRO DE COCO”. “Benito does that a lot and uses the ‘lelolai’, which comes from Jíbaro music. And in ‘CAFé CON RON’, performed in La Casita, he also makes that reference,” he explains.
“Bringing Puerto Rico to Portugal and showcasing that diversity in our country, from reggaeton to salsa to plena, for people who knew little about Puerto Rico, was fantastic. It was beautiful to see that at the concert,” concludes the Puerto Rican professor and researcher at the University of Coimbra.
Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, who worked in a supermarket while releasing songs on SoundCloud and studying Audiovisual Communication, became Bad Bunny. At 32, he is now one of the world’s most popular voices, with tracks that break listening records on Spotify.
All of that, mixed into reggaeton and Latin trap, to the rhythms of bomba and plena, adds up to perreo, a dance (and music) style 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, emblazoned in the activism that runs through his albums, contrasts with the rapper’s silence on other struggles around the world and does not stop him appearing at events sponsored by tycoons such as Jeff Bezos, or signing multi-million deals with brands such as Calvin Klein and, more recently, Zara, part of clothing giant Inditex.
On Thursday, the rapper returns to Spain for a run of ten shows in Madrid. Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, France, Sweden, Poland, Italy and Belgium are next on the schedule.
