What Is . . . A Madonna Concert?

Really, this post should be titled, What is a Madonna Concert in Barcelona?

Especially when it was the Blonde Ambition tour back in 1990:

I remember sitting on the floor directly in front of the only fan in the room during a sweltering day in Barcelona. My twenty-year-old brother and I were visiting my Spanish aunt and uncle for one month without the rest of our family. You would think, wow, a month in Barcelona with no parents! But I was a shy seventeen-year-old who was part homesick and part sick of being so darn hot.

But then we found out that Madonna was going to be in concert in Barcelona while we were there! Madonna! The Blonde Ambition Tour! For a diehard Madonna fan, I could not wait to go.

But my aunt and uncle said no. This was back in the day when Madonna was considered quite scandalous, and while I don’t think my aunt and uncle were all that Catholic, it is how they were raised. It was a very adamant no you can’t go. I was devastated (and still sweaty!).

Now, you’re probably thinking, why didn’t they just go anyway? Seventeen and twenty aren’t that young, but, you see, we were good kids. Like, really good kids. Like the definition of a good kid. We were not the rebellious type. And here’s something you may not know about the good kids— it’s not that they don’t want to rebel now and then, it’s that they can’t, for reasons it’s too hard to explain in a post about a Madonna concert.

Flash forward over forty years to the year of my fiftieth birthday: Madonna announced that she was going on tour and, not only that, she would be playing in Barcelona. I knew I had to buy those tickets ASAP. And I did! Two tickets for November 2nd in Barcelona. While that day is not my birthday, it would be a full-circle moment in the year I turned fifty. It would be a moment to celebrate.

And then my life drastically changed.

And then she got sick and considered canceling the entire tour.

I no longer felt the need to celebrate anything.

But life doesn’t hand you these moments very often, so I decided to book that trip to Spain anyway. And while Madonna did have to cancel a part of her trip, she did not cancel the European portion.

And after a rather difficult summer, I’m ready to celebrate being fifty, being alive and healthy, and being able to attend a Madonna concert in Barcelona. I’m pretty sure my seventeen-year-old self will think she won the lottery, and my fifty-year-old self just may vogue like no one’s watching.

So, play your favorite Madonna song on November 2nd, celebrate, and . . .

Stay Curious.