Is it that serious to call someone “pearl”? For Rosalía’s Argentine fanbase, yes. Her fans across the ocean turned against her after she liked and reshared a Mia Khalifa video in which she celebrates Argentina’s defeat in the World Cup. Thus, an entire country has deemed that the artist has joined “the campaign of hatred toward Argentinians.”
“How life sounds now that the pearls have been defeated,” reads the caption in the middle of the video Khalifa posted. In the background, “La Perla,” of course. If there is anything clear, it is that Rosalía runs her own social media. No external manager would like and repost such a post less than 10 days before the singer’s concerts at the Movistar Arena in Argentina. She has four dates scheduled, all sold out, on August 1, 2, 4 and 6.
Between images of Rosalía being labeled a persona non grata across “the entire Argentine territory” with hundreds of thousands of views or ticket-refund guides with millions of views (the most shared one surpasses 4 million on X), the singer has ended up withdrawing her interactions with Mia Khalifa’s post. However, her latest Instagram post has not escaped hundreds of Argentine comments with tens of thousands of likes: “You are the only pearl” or “Rauw Alejandro is a stand‑up guy” are among them.
ROSALÍA UNWELCOMED PERSON. Let it explode. pic.twitter.com/7ItT4h3I4Y
— Vulgarcite (@vulgarcite) July 21, 2026
The backlash has been so intense that even Clarín, Argentina’s most-read newspaper, has published an article explaining to its readers how they can return their Rosalía tickets. Even the largest fan club in Argentina, with 134,000 followers on Instagram, has had to share a statement. This is surprisingly sensible: “We believe that no opinion justifies attacks, aggressions, or harassment toward other people,” they state.
There are those who defend Rosalía, arguing that “she refers to pearl as Tokischa, her best friend, to herself and to everyone,” but it isn’t surprising that this fails to convince any fellow Argentine. The most likely explanation is that Rosalía didn’t spend more than a couple of seconds on reposting Mia Khalifa’s post: either she thought it was cool that the actress posted a video with her song, or she found it harmless and entertaining to call Argentinians “pearls” after her boorish behavior in the World Cup final. As Rosalía herself said: “We have all been a little pearl at some point.”
