Last Saturday, Marenostrum Fuengirola was the stage for the return of El Último de la Fila, the band led by Manolo García and Quimi Portet. Before 18,500 souls, the Catalan duo broke a three-decade silence, offering a two-hour and ten-minute concert. The evening kicked off with songs from Los Burros, their previous project, and featured a ten-piece band to recreate their classic sound.
The backline: ten musicians and high-precision logistics 🎸
To sustain a repertoire spanning from Los Burros to their El Último de la Fila era, the production deployed a ten-piece band on stage. The setup included a horn section, backing vocals, and a dedicated monitor engineer to manage the foldback in a venue with a capacity of nearly twenty thousand people. Synchronization among the musicians was key, especially during tempo changes in songs like Insurrección or El loco de la calle. There were no samples or pre-recorded tracks; everything was performed live, which required fine-tuning the equalization to avoid feedback on the drums and acoustic guitars.
30 years later, even the tuner asked for a break 😅
Seeing Manolo García and Quimi Portet together again was like running into those friends you stopped seeing because one moved to a farmhouse and the other started growing bonsai trees. The setlist kicked off with songs from Los Burros, as if to say: Before this, we were younger and had more hair. And yes, the band sounded good, but there were moments when the backing vocals seemed to wonder: Was it like this, or do we remember it better?. Still, no one complained: 18,500 people paid to witness the miracle of two veterans remembering the lyrics without a teleprompter.