Patti Smith will give a free concert in Gijón on October 20, exactly 50 years after her first performance in Spain. The event will take place at the Teatro Jovellanos and will be organized by the Princess of Asturias Foundation, in honor of the Princess of Asturias Award for the Arts 2026, which the artist will receive three days later in Oviedo.
Coincidentally, on October 20, 1976, Patti Smith performed before about 5,000 people at the Pavilion of the Youth Club in Badalona. She was presenting her second album, Radio Ethiopia, and also played tracks from her legendary Horses, along with covers of The Velvet Underground and the Rolling Stones.
The Badalona show was hailed by the press of the time as “the first rock’n’roll concert that has been seen and heard in this country,” as recalled by 20 Minutos. Now Smith will return to Spain to receive the Princess of Asturias Award and, in the process, revisit the same date half a century later.
