Bad Bunny and Fuerza Regida just made history for Spanish-language music. As of this week, the Puerto Rican artist’s “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” and the San Bernardino group’s “111XPANTIA” became the first-ever Spanish-language albums to simultaneously sit at Nos. 1 and 2 on the Billboard 200 album chart.
Fuerza Regida’s album, which dropped May 2, debuted in the No. 2 spot on the chart. According to Billboard, it became the highest-charting música regional album and Spanish-language album by a group or duo.
Bad Bunny’s wide-spanning love letter to his beloved Puerto Rico — “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” — regained the top spot in the charts after he released a vinyl edition of the album. It was previously sitting in the seventh position on the Billboard 200 and has lingered in the top 10 since it debuted on Jan. 5.
Bad Bunny announced a 23-date stadium tour in support of the album that will kick off Nov. 21 in the Dominican Republic, followed by shows in Costa Rica, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Chile and Argentina. There are currently no U.S. dates scheduled for the tour.
“111XPANTIA,” Fuerza Regida’s ninth studio album, released under Rancho Humilde and Street Mob Records, marks the group’s return to its original corrido style, in contrast to its last album, 2024’s “Pero No Te Enamores,” which explored more electronically-geared genres like Jersey club, drill and house music.
The album title itself, “111XPANTIA,” is made up of two parts: the first is a palindrome, “111,” which some call an “angel number,” or a sign of luck; the second part stems from the Nahuatl word for manifestation, “ixpantia.”
“The meaning of this album is to manifest an idea, to think your dreams into reality and to prove something through the power of the mind and the concept of the law of attraction,” said Fuerza Regida frontman Jesús Ortiz Paz, a.k.a. JOP, in a press release.
Bad Bunny fans, prepare your wallets and passports, because the Puerto Rican singer is embarking on his “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” world tour.
The Grammy-winning singer announced new shows Monday, via a short clip on Instagram that featured his animated concho frog exclaiming, “at last!” before shooting off his paper plane into the ether.
The 23-date stadium tour will kick off Nov. 21 in the Dominican Republic, followed by shows in Costa Rica, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Chile and Argentina.
The 31-year-old singer will also stop in Brazil, Australia and Japan, and will return to Europe for the first time since his 2019 “X 100pre” Tour.
News of this world tour comes two months before the trap-reggaeton star embarks on his sold-out residency, “No Me Quiero Ir de Aquí,” this summer at the José Miguel Agrelot Coliseum of Puerto Rico, better known locally as “el Choliseo.”
Upon its release earlier this year, his critically-acclaimed sixth studio album, “Debí Tirar Más Fotos,” spent three weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, and has remained in the top 10 albums for the subsequent 13 weeks.
Bad Bunny has kept busy since the release of “DTmF,” appearing in a steamy Calvin Klein Underwear spring campaign and performing on NPR’s Tiny Desk concert series. The “Baile Inolvidable” singer is also slated to be the musical guest on “Saturday Night Live” on May 17 to close out the show’s milestone 50th season. He will also also appear on-screen in Netflix’s “Happy Gilmore 2” and Darren Aronofsky’s film “Caught Stealing,” which will hit theaters Aug. 29.
His last tour, the 2024 “Most Wanted” tour, grossed over $208 million, selling over 700,000 tickets, according to Pollstar. His Puerto Rican residency has sold over 400,000, both online and through in-person sales.
Tickets for the world tour go on sale Friday at depuertoricopalmundo.com.
Relations between Algeria and its former coloniser, France, have rarely been straightforward.
After hitting a low point in July when France supported Algeria’s regional rival Morocco over its claim to the disputed territory of the Western Sahara, relations appeared to be recovering.
But then the April arrest in France of an Algerian consular official along with two other men for alleged involvement in the kidnapping near Paris of Algerian government critic Amir Boukhors has triggered a new wave of tensions.
So why are diplomats now being expelled, and what does this mean for relations between Algeria and its former coloniser?
Let’s break it down:
Who is Amir Boukhors?
Boukhors, or Amir DZ, is an Algerian online influencer and critic of Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune with more than 1 million subscribers on TikTok.
The French government gave Boukhors political asylum in 2023.
But as far as the Algerian government is concerned, he’s a fraudster and a “terrorist”, who they’ve been seeking to extradite from France since 2016.
Algeria has tried to extradite Boukhors nine times. All attempts have been declined by France.
Why would an Algerian consular official allegedly want to kidnap him?
Speaking to the newspaper Le Parisien in an interview published on April 9, Boukhors said that on returning to his home in Val-de-Marne near Paris during the evening of April 29, 2024, he was stopped by an unmarked car with flashing lights.
Four men in civilian clothes handcuffed him and threw him into the vehicle.
“They first told me that an Algerian official wanted to talk to me, that that was why they were taking me. Then they told me the plan had changed and that I was going to Amsterdam,” Boukhors told the newspaper.
Boukhors said he was then forced to swallow sleeping pills and was held in a “container” for more than 27 hours before being released without explanation.
A subsequent investigation by France’s counterespionage agency uncovered information leading to the arrest on April 11 of three men with a fourth still reportedly at large.
Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune has been a frequent target of Boukhors’s online criticism [AP Photo]
No information has been released about two of the men. However, the third was an Algerian consular employee, French officials said.
Algeria issued a statement the following day strongly denying its official’s involvement and protesting the person’s arrest “in public … without notification through the diplomatic channels”.
The statement denounced what it charged was a “far-fetched argument” based “on the sole fact that the accused consular officer’s mobile phone was allegedly located around the home” of Boukhors.
All three suspects were later charged with “kidnapping or arbitrary detention … in connection with a terrorist undertaking”.
What was the diplomatic response?
On April 14, Algeria announced that 12 French consular officials had 48 hours to leave the country.
The statement, read on public television, confirmed the expulsions had been ordered in response to France’s arrest of the Algerian official.
According to the statement, the arrest had been intended to “humiliate Algeria, with no consideration for the consular status of this agent, disregarding all diplomatic customs and practices”.
A statement from the office of French President Emmanuel Macron described the Algerian decision as “incomprehensible and unjustified” and said Algiers should “resume dialogue” and “take responsibility for the degradation in bilateral relations”.
Why have relations between France and Algeria historically been poor?
France colonised Algeria for 132 years, killing Algerian civilians and creating a class structure in which European settlers and their descendants were on top.
The French refused to leave Algeria, considering it an integral part of France. It was only after a war of independence that France finally left in 1962. Algeria is still referred to as the “country of a million martyrs” because of the number of people killed by France during the fight for independence.
But the dispute has not ended there. The issue of the Western Sahara is also causing tension, not just between France and Algeria but also across North Africa.
Western Sahara – a disputed territory in northwestern Africa – is at the centre of the poor relations between Algeria and Morocco. Rabat claims the territory as its own and occupies the majority of it while Algeria supports the pro-independence Polisario Front and has taken in tens of thousands of Sahrawi refugees.
What has France’s position on the Western Sahara been?
France has largely backed Morocco – despite the United Nations not recognising Rabat’s sovereignty over the Western Sahara. And last year, Macron said France’s position was that it supported Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara.
At the time, Algeria voiced its “deep disapproval” of France’s “unexpected, ill-timed and counterproductive” decision to endorse Morocco’s autonomy plan for Western Sahara and recalled its ambassador.
However, relations between the two were thought to be improving since then.
Speaking in early April after a series of talks intended to restore relations after the rift, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said: “We are reactivating as of today all the mechanisms of cooperation in all sectors. We are going back to normal and to repeat the words of President Tebboune: ‘The curtain is lifted.’”
But the Boukhors case and the diplomatic expulsions that have followed it have made it clear that the curtain has fallen right back down.
