M-Tribe Community member epraes attended the Sticky & Sweet Tour concert in Zaragoza where Madonna performed in front of a crowd of 30,000 last night and here is what he has to say about it.

“The concert itself was fabulous – a lot better than I expected, even after having watched the SKY1 broadcast. But the organization was horrible – the public transport service which the Town Hall prepared failed miserably. We were queueing from 19.30 h and our turn to get on the bus came at 21.45h!

The venue itself is about 10 min away by car, so we thought, “Ok, we miss Oakenfold but we’ll arrive in time anyway”. But a gigantic traffic jam at the entrance kept us waiting and I couldn’t get in up until Vogue was finishing. At least 1000 people were still waiting for a bus when I left, so I’m unsure whether they made it in time at all to see any of the show! Awful organization, the police was just standing there while we were waiting inside the buses for the jam to disappear, instead of trying to divert some traffic or something.”

“The venue was awfully prepared. I could have entered a rifle had I wished so. But the show (or the part of it I witnessed) was terrific. Being an open field, the sound was quite clear, and my view wasn’t that bad considering the late arrival and the fact that I had “General A”, not Golden Circle.”

“Madonna said “Saragossa” quite a few times and cried during You Must Love Me, although she didn’t mention the dead workers this time around. She was quite energetic and sang very well, frankly, at times I thought she was miming but she wasn’t. Before You Must Love Me, a lot of people in the first rows started to say “guapa“, she understood and said “Gracias” and “Muchas gracias”.”

“As an anecdote, the crowd responded poorly to Spanish Lesson, and she forgot the words. Instead of “Mucho gusto means I’m welcome to you” she said “Mucho mucho means I’m welcome to you” which doesn’t make any sense. She also said “Estoy caliente“, which got the crowd very excited! But I’m not sure if she was speaking about the heat of the night or about being horny…”

“She was all smiles and had a lot of interaction with the crowd at the end, letting people sing along to Give It 2 Me. Once it ended, we rushed outside to avoid the pandemonium of the arrival, which we were fortunate to achieve, taking one of the first buses back.”

“In all, I’m still surprised she came here to Zaragoza considering how badly things are always arranged in this city (we had and International Exposition last year and nobody even noticed abroad), and a bit fed up with her for not starting late as she usually does! But the experience was way better than the other time I saw her, in 2001 opening her Drowned World Tour in Barcelona, which was a lot more stressful during the concert. Today it was far from sold out, there was a lot of room for everyone and the usual drunkards were able to wander around with their beer speaking nonsense. Most people in this area seemed bored to death anyway, but I and my friends had great fun. That’s what counts at the end.”

“As for the attendance, I still think the numbers are very respectable. Don’t forget that the concert was confirmed quite a few weeks after Madrid and Barcelona had started to sell tickets, which undoubtedly hurt sales for Zaragoza – I know many people who had bought tickets for Madrid and, being unable to return them, couldn’t afford to buy for both cities.”

“Besides, it was the 5th concert in a year in Spain, and as much as we’d love Madonna to sell out every venue, we have to be realistic. I was afraid we wouldn’t be more than 20.000 people, which was the number the organizers spoke about one month ago.”

Thanks to epraes.