Bad Bunny's Real Gift to Puerto Rico Isn't $200 Million
Much of the coverage has focused on how the 30 shows will be a financial boon for the island — and with good reason. The concerts are expected to pump nearly $200 million into the local economy. This would be significant anywhere, but it carries even greater weight in Puerto Rico, where 43% of the population lives below the poverty line, according to a 2024 Financial Industry Regulatory Authority report. That's more than double the rate of states with the highest poverty rates in the mainland US.
To say that Boricua employees and small businesses — hotels, transportation services and restaurants — are riding the superstar's wave would be an understatement. Even my local café in Old San Juan has a Bad Bunny theme.
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RBS play makes a drama out of the banking crisis
Douglas Fraser became BBC Scotland's business and economy editor on the day Royal Bank of Scotland began its downfall, threatening the world economy. He returns to that story as a new play at the Edinburgh International Festival dramatises the bank's downfall. Some stories take you on a journey into the unknown. Make it Happen is all too familiar. Most of us can recall this story from nearly 17 years ago. That's the time it takes someone to grow up, reaching the point of almost being able to get an overdraft. Told in episodes that jog recollection of being an observer, the play catches the events of the banking crisis in that space between fading recent memory and hard print history. "This is a story in time and place," we're told. That time was the NICE decade – it stands for Non-Inflationary Continuing Expansion. It meant property prices rising faster than we could earn income. It was when the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, told us he had magicked up "the end of boom and bust". 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He doesn't give Fred Goodwin the charisma of a dramatic starring role, but instead a geeky, thoughtful intensity, building fear through his silences, with a ruthlessness that makes the audience gasp. Played by Sandy Grierson, what gives him energy is his dialogue with the ghost of Adam Smith, played by Brian Cox. The father of economics is rarely seen as either slightly camp or foul-mouthed, but in this reincarnation, the Dundonian screen star gets the best laughs. Goodwin worshipped Smith's The Wealth of Nations and is seen misinterpreting the philosopher's teaching as a manifesto rather than an observation of the way economic entities behave. He desperately wants to believe that personal ambition serves the common good. But Goodwin failed to read Smith's balancing treatise on "moral sentiment", leaving him untethered in both his rise to greatness and his mighty fall. Swearing, Smith's ghost concludes that Goodwin is an "idiot". 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11 hours ago
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Bad Bunny Just Wants to Stay Home. So Do I.
On July 11, Bad Bunny kicked off his three-month residency at the Coliseo de Puerto Rico. The first nine shows were reserved for locals, but starting this weekend they are open to anyone, and hundreds of thousands of people from around the world will begin pouring into our archipelago. It's the kind of extended run usually reserved for Las Vegas — not a bankrupt U.S. colony reeling from hurricanes, blackouts and political dysfunction. But that's precisely the point. What's unfolding in San Juan this summer is more than a run of shows. It's a reminder that you don't have to assimilate, or leave home to find success, and that staying in Puerto Rico does not have to mean sacrifice. We can do more here than just endure — we can thrive. And we can do it without destroying our natural resources or courting tax exiles, but by investing in our most renewable resource: our cultural genius. Bad Bunny, or Benito, as he is affectionately known here at home, rose to fame in 2016, which happened to be the same year Congress imposed an unelected fiscal control board to oversee local finances. His music has become the soundtrack of both our trauma and our resistance, echoing through hurricanes, earthquakes, blackouts, mass protests that toppled a governor and the rise of new political coalitions. He's become our global ambassador, spotlighting both our challenges and the richness of our culture. It's a heavy burden for a 31-year-old who just wanted to make music. But, true to his stage name, he carries it with roguish charm. His lyrics, always sung in Spanish, blend the harsh realities of blackouts, potholes, colonialism, corruption and displacement with the emotional weight of love, the pleasures of lust and the messy beauty of community and family. In doing so he has created a new kind of protest music, one that grieves, celebrates and grooves all at once. His latest album, 'Debí Tomar Más Fotos,' or 'I Should Have Taken More Pictures,' is a love letter and a lament for a Puerto Rico slipping through our fingers: betrayed by its leaders; its neighborhoods displaced for luxury developments; its land sold to outsiders, subdivided by Airbnb and crypto schemes and repackaged as paradise for others. The album and concert series 'No Me Quiero Ir de Aquí' ('I Don't Want to Leave Here') express both a desire to stay and build, and a fear that doing so may not be possible. Its message has resonated far beyond Puerto Rico. On social media, people from places as near as Cuba and as far as Gaza have paired clips of the title track with images of homelands they were forced to leave. The posts capture a collective longing — not just for what was lost, but also for what might have been. Like them, Puerto Ricans face an agonizing decision: stay and fight, or leave and risk never finding their way back. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Yahoo
14 hours ago
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Former NBA Star's Pregnant Wife Bitten By Shark In Puerto Rico: 'Worst Day Of My Life'
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