Shakira, Shakira… music and books

Publisher Penguin Random House has conceived and programmed La Biblioteca (The Library), the literature pavilion at ES LATINA, Shakira's European residency “Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran”.

The space will bring books, authors and reading to the Colombian artist's audience across the twelve dates she will play in Madrid between 18 September and 11 October, in front of more than 600,000 fans.

It is the first time a music residency of this kind has made literature a pillar of its cultural programme in its own right. The idea is not simply to bring books to a concert, but to build literature into the architecture of the project, with its own space, its own programme and experiences centred on the craft of writing that invite the public to read, listen, talk, create, write and share.

The starting point is Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, a founding book of the Ibero-American imagination and a gateway to themes such as roots, memory, family, identity, solitude and collective cycles.

As Shakira has put it, “Macondo isn't a town: it's a mirror” — an image that brings together reality and imagination, intimacy and shared experience, roots and cultural blending.

Side activities

Macondo se escucha (Listening to Macondo) is an audiovisual and sound experience created by Penguin Audio from One Hundred Years of Solitude. Excerpts from the novel, narration, sound design and illustrations by Luisa Rivera combine into an immersive landscape that lets visitors enter Macondo through voice, listening and image, from the founding of the town to the memory of the Buendía family.

“Shakira's Library”

Fans will find a curated selection of books inspired by the Latin world and tied to the artist's cultural and emotional universe. Organised into four territories — Roots, She-Wolf, Anthology and Create — it explores identity, finding your own voice, love, motherhood, memory, reinvention and other key themes of her songbook. Titles include Laura Restrepo's Delirium; Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits; Quino's Mafalda complete strips; Clarissa Pinkola Estés's Women Who Run with the Wolves; Elísabet Benavent's Una niña buena; María Esclapez's Me quiero, te quiero; Mercedes Ron's Culpa mía; Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way; and Roald Dahl's Matilda, among others.

Book Club and Voices of Latin Culture

Over the residency's four weekends, the “ES LATINA Book Club by Shakira” will hold live sessions on One Hundred Years of Solitude, Una niña buena, Una familia moderna, Women Who Run with the Wolves and Me quiero, te quiero. Each session will set these books in conversation with Shakira's songs and with discussions between authors.

Audience participation will be central to the pavilion. In “Tu Propia Historia” (Your Own Story), visitors will answer the question “What story can only you tell?” and write the opening lines of the story they have always wanted to start. Together, the pages will form a collective installation of voices, experiences and personal imaginations.

The Cursiva–Fundación Pies Descalzos Scholarship will carry that invitation further. It aims to discover new storytelling voices and support people with a powerful story to tell, even if they have no writing experience or finished novel. A jury drawn from both organisations will choose the winner, who will receive a full scholarship worth €2,999 for Cursiva's novel-writing course.

Other activities include “Marca Tu Clásico” (Mark Your Classic), where visitors can design and personalise bookmarks based on Penguin Clásicos titles; “Cartas de una Loba” (Letters from a She-Wolf), offering book recommendations for different moments in life; and “El Buzón” (The Mailbox), which invites the public to write and leave letters for Shakira, giving back in their own words what her songs have helped them express.

In this one-of-a-kind space in Madrid, Shakira brings music and literature together.