Spanish
Former U.S. President Barack Obama spoke on Saturday in an interview about the presentation of Puerto Rican Bad Bunny in the Super Bowl halftime show, which provoked an international debate regarding the artist, his talent and representation.
"It resonated. It was smart," Obama said. "It was demonstrating and exhibiting: this is what a community is. And people who didn't speak Spanish and had never been to Puerto Rico saw that older woman serving a drink and the children dancing with their grandmothers, and it was intergenerational, and it was a reminder of what Dr. [Martin Luther] King called the 'beloved community' can be, [...] which is not perfect and is sometimes chaotic," he added.
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At the same time, the former president admitted that "probably not all those letters were politically correct", but "there was a feeling that here there is space for everyone". "And there, I think, is where we win", he concluded.What is the controversy?
Obama's words come after the singer made history by becoming the first artist to offer a Super Bowl halftime show entirely in Spanish. The star closed its number with a parade of flags from all the countries of America, as a reminder that the name belongs to a continent and not just to the U.S. That act, with a great symbolic charge, has been interpreted by some as an open confrontation with President Donald Trump and his immigration policy. Trump himself called Bad Bunny's show "absolutely terrible" in a post on Truth Social, where he criticized both the music and the dancing, and questioned that the show did not represent, according to his view, the values of the country. "Nobody understands a word this guy says, and the dancing is disgusting," he denounced.Meanwhile, in the American Congress, enraged Republicans are calling to "lock up" Bad Bunny, arguing that his performance at the Super Bowl allegedly included inappropriate language and "unmentionable depravities."
For its part, the Puerto Rican Academy of the Spanish Language has awarded an official recognition to the singer Bad Bunny for his "exceptional contribution" to the international dissemination of Spanish.
