Opinion: Rosalía’s latest statements about Bad Bunny reveal why she is not Latina

Rosalía stated in a New York Times podcast that she was different from Bad Bunny, who had previously stated he didn’t care whether people didn’t understand his songs in Spanish.  

“I think I’m the opposite of Benito. I think I care. I care so much that definitely I’m going to make the effort to sing in a language that’s not my language. It’s not my comfort zone,” Rosalía says in the podcast. 

In her new album, “Lux,” she sings in 14 different languages. 

In a social media video, content creator lachicxquehabita explains why Rosalía’s statement reveals that the singer doesn’t understand the historical, political and cultural meaning that the Spanish language has for Bad Bunny, who is from Puerto Rico, a country that has been discriminated against and repressed because of their use of the Spanish language. 

Rosalía is from Sant Esteve Sesrovires, Spain, the country that colonized Latin America and established Spanish as the official language in all its colonized territories, many times erasing or attempting to erase the native languages spoken by the Indigenous communities living there. 

That is why Rosalía cannot be considered a Latina. She doesn’t understand the meaning that Spanish has, because to her it is only her native language, but to many Latin Americans, it is a symbol of identity that many have fought to preserve. 

In the same way that Indigenous languages were erased, Spanish is now a language that many, including the current administration in power, is trying to erase from the United States. 

Bad Bunny is an American citizen, but to some, he is not American enough, because he doesn’t sing in English. 

It is not the same for Rosalía, as a Spaniard, singing in Spanish is a given; she is not fighting the same battles that Bad Bunny is fighting. 

Europe doesn’t see language in the same way that Latin America and North America do. For Europeans, like Rosalía, the more languages you know, the better. People are encouraged to learn at least a second language. That is not the case in the United States, which had never had an official language until Trump’s executive order. 

His administration removed all Spanish web pages from the White House website. There is a history in this country of people fighting against bilingual education, including in California. 

Speaking or singing in Spanish has become a political statement; that's what it means for Bad Bunny to sing in Spanish. When he sings in Spanish at the Super Bowl next year, it will undeniably be a political statement in today's political and cultural climate, even if his lyrics are not political. 

Let me be clear, I like some of Rosalía’s music and I am not saying her statement is wrong. If anything, I think her statement exemplifies her point of view as a multilingual person and it’s great that she has chosen to sing in other languages. But she could never understand what Spanish means to Benito, because she is not Latina in the sense that she is not Latin American. 

She may be a Latina in the sense that Spanish is a Latin language, that she grew up speaking Spanish and she shares the Spanish aspects of our culture that have been transmuted in Latin America from Spain. But she does not share the same history and she is not making a political statement if she speaks or sings in Spanish in her own country.