Shakira is returning to the stage in Spain for the first time in eight years as the country’s Supreme Court reviews an appeal over almost €55 million ($63 million) in tax assessments and penalties.
The Colombian pop star, 49, begins a 12-show residency in Madrid on Friday, with more than 600,000 people expected to attend the concerts.
The shows come as Spanish authorities continue their legal battle with Shakira over her tax affairs during her years in the country.
Shakira’s tax battle
Earlier this year, Shakira won a ruling that wiped out almost €55 million in tax assessments and penalties for 2011.
Spanish authorities have appealed the decision, and the Supreme Court is now reviewing the case.
The ruling is separate from charges covering 2012 through 2014. Shakira settled that case in 2023 after pleading guilty to six counts of tax fraud and receiving a suspended prison sentence.
After the 2023 settlement, Shakira criticised Spain’s tax authorities and moved to Miami. Her view of Spain has since become warmer.
“I picked Madrid for this celebration,” she wrote in newspaper El País last month. “Something happens here that the world ought to see: Latino immigration is not just tolerated, it is celebrated. Spain has embraced it.”
In 2024, however, Shakira described her time in Spain differently.
“For me, the Spanish decade was a lost decade financially,” Shakira said in El Mundo. “Today, my net worth consists of what I made before moving to Spain and what I earned after leaving it. All I made in those years was kept by the Spanish state.”
Madrid residency
After her tax victory earlier this year, Shakira dedicated the ruling to people she said had suffered under a system that presumed their guilt.
“There was never any fraud, and the tax authorities could never prove otherwise,” she said.
The Madrid residency will wrap up Shakira’s world tour for her album Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran. She has described the residency as Europe’s biggest-ever.
Live Nation Entertainment has built a 55,000-seat temporary stadium south of Madrid for the concerts. Organisers expect the residency to generate about €150 million for the city.
A nearby attraction, Macondo Park, takes its name from the fictional town in Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. The site features businesses and activities for fans before the shows.
“I want people to know that my love for Spain and my dear Spanish friends and family still endures,” Shakira wrote in 2024. “But not everything is the same.”
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