The enduring love for the late Mexican singer-songwriter Juan Gabriel was on display at “The X” monument in Juárez on Saturday, Nov. 29, as more than 10,000 fans attended a public showing of a film of one of his most-famous concerts, city officials said.
Juan Gabriel, whose love for his adopted hometown of Juárez was always proudly on display, has seen a resurgence in popularity with a new biographical docuseries on Netflix.
“I know I’ve said it many times, but I’m not going to get tired of saying it, Juan Gabriel is a person who started from the very, very bottom and reached the very, very top and he never forgot about Juárez,” Juárez Mayor Cruz Perez Cuellar said at the event, according to a statement issued by the city.
The mayor was joined at the concert-event by Juan Gabriel’s son Jean Aguilera and Mexico’s Secretary of Culture Claudia Curiel de Icaza.
On a brisk Saturday night, the X at the Plaza de la Mexicanidad (the Plaza of Mexican Identity) along the border hosted a showing of music icon’s groundbreaking first concert in the Palacio de Bellas Artes (Palace of Fine Arts) in Mexico City in 1990.
The free event was initially considered to take place outside Juan Gabriel’s home-turned-museum in Juárez, but was move to the “The X” plaza because of the expected crowd size.
The popularity of “El Divo de Juárez” continues to live on even after his death prior to a traveling from California to perform in concert at the Don Haskins Center in El Paso in 2016.
Juan Gabriel (real name Alberto Aguilera Valadez) has a popularity that extends across the Spanish-speaking world and his music has become a important part of Mexico’s culture, the city’s event organizers said.
The event was done in collaboration with the Juárez city government, the Juan Gabriel Museum and Netflix, city officials said.
In October, Netflix released the docuseries “Juan Gabriel: Debo, Puedo y Quiero” (“Juan Gabriel: I Must, I Can, I Will”) chronicling his rise from poverty in Juárez to becoming one of of the most popular singer-songwriters in Latin America.
Since the release of the Netflix series, Juan Gabriel has gained more than 1.6 million new listeners on Spotify with 60% of them being younger than 29 years old and the streaming of his music has jumped 3,300%, reported Al Día, the Spanish-language news section of the Dallas Morning News.
Daniel Borunda may be reached at dborunda@elpasotimes.com and @BorundaDaniel on X.
This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: Thousands attend Juan Gabriel concert film at ‘The X’ in Juárez
Reporting by Daniel Borunda, El Paso Times / El Paso Times
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