For one weekend this month, when Bad Bunny’s two sell-out concerts at Tottenham Hotspur became the largest Spanish-language shows in UK history, the north London I grew up in was transformed. As tens of thousands of Londoners, Latinos and non-Latinos, walked towards the stadium from Seven Sisters Latin market, reggaetón blaring from local shops selling Puerto Rican pava straw hats, a sun-filled Tottenham High Road suddenly felt like Spanish Harlem.
The Latino takeover of Haringey was a far cry from the place I arrived in, aged seven, having left Buenos Aires, the only place I knew till then. If you had mentioned the word “Latin” back then, people would have thought you were talking about ancient Rome. Forty-five years later, as Pitbull became the first Latin artist to headline British Summer Time in Hyde Park last Friday, and my own festival, LatinoLife in the Park, the UK’s largest Latin Music festival as it celebrates 10 years on 19 July, Latin music is well and truly planted in British culture, and it’s here to stay.
