In September 2017, just as Abner Román and Karla Ly Quiñones were about to open the doors of Café Comunión in the Santurce neighborhood of San Juan, Puerto Rico, Hurricane Maria devastated the island.

“It took the entire front of our shop, we had structural damage and there was no electricity,” they remember. Instead of serving coffee from behind a counter, they took to the streets. “I would make it at home in the morning and walk across the street with a thermos, milk and sugar,” Abner recalls. They gave the coffee away for free, and also accepted donations, which they used to rebuild what the devastating storm had destroyed.

Who would have thought that seven years later Bad Bunny would stop in for a coffee at their shop after voting in Puerto Rico’s 2024 gubernatorial election? And that the singer would end up forming such a close relationship with Karla and Abner that he would offer them the chance to join his tour so he could keep drinking his favorite coffee while performing around the world.

“He came with his assistant, sat at the bar and we spent several hours talking about coffee and normal things, like NBA games,” they say. He came back the following week and kept coming back. Abner thinks this is because “they treat him like everyone else. Other customers have caught the vibe and no one asks him for photos. They greet him, yes, but I think that’s part of why he likes coming here.”

The truth is that before Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio stopped by Café Comunión, several members of his team were already regulars. Through their frequent contact with people working in the music industry, Karla and Abner had toyed with the idea of offering their coffee services at concerts, but they never imagined they would do so on a tour of this scale, catering to all the backstage staff.

First they took part in Bad Bunny’s 30-show residency in Puerto Rico, held between July and September 2025. Then they were invited to join the DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS world tour — and off they went, with their “coffee shop on wheels” and their six‑year‑old son in tow.

Over the past few months, they have been serving coffee backstage at Bad Bunny’s concerts in the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Peru, Colombia, Australia — and now Spain. Each day, they cater to between 150 and 200 members of the artist’s crew, as well as the show’s guests. Abner admits he himself is still amazed by the situation.

“I had never heard of an artist taking baristas on tour. Concert venues offer catering services that include coffee, but here they wanted an experience — an area where colleagues could come to talk and disconnect,“ he says. ”Like going out for a coffee, but in the backstage area.”

Café Comunión’s distinctive blue cup has even made its way onto the stage on several occasions, with Bad Bunny raising it in front of the crowd.

Despite years of experience running their business, managing a mobile specialty coffee shop comes with its own challenges.

“Before we arrive at each city, we contact local suppliers and try to use that country’s coffee,” they explain. “We speak with roasters and producers, with espresso machine technicians (just in case), with milk distributors and sometimes with baristas in case we need someone to cover a shift.”

While they travel with the tour, their team keeps the two cafés they own in San Juan open (in addition to Santurce, they have another location in Río Piedras) and, in the downtime between shows, they make the most of the opportunity to meet other people in the industry. “We try to build connections in every country we visit.”

On June 4, during their stay in Madrid, they will be at Hola Coffee Roastery (Av. de Pedro Díez, 21Bis) preparing coffee and some of their signature drinks, a collaborative format they previously organized with cafés in Colombia, Mexico and Peru.

“The idea is to bring the Comunión experience to the country we’re in,” they say.

And what does that experience consist of? “We use the word ‘comunión’ in its secular sense. We want people who come to our coffee shop to feel welcomed and be able to disconnect in the company of others, creating a kind of communion between the barista and the rest of the customers.”

Two teachers who fell in love with coffee

Before opening Café Comunión, both Abner, 44, and Karla, 38, were teachers by profession — he taught English and she taught history. Owning a business had always been Abner’s dream, and this drink —which, according to him, “is consumed at all times in Puerto Rico” — had always caught his attention. So in 2008, he asked for a job at one of the cafés he used to frequent.

“Since teachers have the summer off, I asked if they would give me a chance to work those months,” he recalls. “I started washing dishes, then working at the cash register, and I really liked the coffee-shop atmosphere. Little by little, I learned to be a barista, and in 2013, I won a national latte art competition and then went to compete in Australia.”

There was no turning back. That prize confirmed he could make the leap from the classroom to the coffee bar, and he did. Karla joined shortly afterwards, focusing more on importers and the farms that grow the coffee.

“Although really we both do everything, because we’re a small business,” she says.

They gradually built a place for themselves in the coffee industry, and the next logical step was to open their own café. That’s how Comunión was born in 2017. Despite delays caused by Hurricane Maria, they managed to open before the end of the year, in December.

By then, Karla and Abner had been living in Santurce for some time, and he had worked for years in one of the neighborhood’s cafés, so they were already familiar faces in the area — something that helped them build a strong community around the business.

“After the hurricane, when neighbors saw us working hard to get things going, we connected even more. It was a moment when the community really came together, and we formed a very special bond,” Abner recalls.

They continued to take part in neighborhood activities and even opened their café space for community meetings. “We’re always ready to help however we can.”

Recently, Café Comunión was included on the list of the 100 best cafés in North America, Central America and the Caribbean. It ranked 44th, and was the only café from Puerto Rico to make it on the list.

“It made us feel very honoured; it was confirmation that we’re doing things right,” they say.

The couple has earned recognition from their own community in Puerto Rico, from the industry and now Bad Bunny — what will come next?

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At a time when tens of thousands of people flock each night to see Bad Bunny in Madrid and share millions of videos capturing his every move, it feels strange to think that on this very day, exactly 50 years ago, a concert took place that was likely attended by fewer people than those dancing each night in the Puerto Rican star’s casita — and yet may have changed popular music forever.

A gig recreated in at least two films (24 Hour Party People and Control) and named by NME as “the most important concert of all time.” We are talking about the Sex Pistols’ concert on June 4, 1976, at the Lesser Free Trade Hall in Manchester.

Half the boomer population of that northern English city claims to have attended the seminal punk show. But, as David Nolan notes in I Swear I Was There, the canonical book on the concert, it is relatively easy to clear up one of rock history’s great mysteries: how many people actually went to see a bunch of nearly unknown lads from London that hot Friday night in Manchester?

According to the city’s municipal archives, ticket sales generated a total of £14. At 50 pence a ticket, 28 tickets were sold. The confusion — and the ever-shifting number of supposed attendees — is partly explained by the fact that the Pistols played another show in the city a few weeks later. The select club of spectators that legend has placed in that room — including Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook (Joy Division and New Order), Morrissey (the Smiths), Marc E. Smith (The Fall), and Tony Wilson (Factory Records) — was most likely split between the two dates.

What is known is that the men who brought the Pistols to that venue were Peter McNeish and Howard Trafford, two Manchester lads who were fed up with the glam rock they heard at university. In a northern city like theirs, the way to learn what was happening in London was to read the British music press, which applied Fleet Street’s taste for hyperbole to popular culture.

On February 18, 1976, they read a review in NME, written by Neil Spencer, about a band that had opened for Eddie and the Hot Rods at London’s Marquee club. It said that they had played a cover of The Stooges’ No Fun, and that when someone in the audience complained they couldn’t play, a member of the band replied: “So what?” The article spoke of sex, violence, and anarchy. “We’re not into music, we’re into chaos,” the band said.

That review changed their lives — and their names. They became Pete Shelley and Howard Devoto, and began to sense a path forward for the band they were putting together, The Buzzcocks. They had a friend’s car at their disposal that weekend and drove to London to see the Sex Pistols. They caught them live on February 20 and 21, and, asking around for their manager, were directed to 430 King’s Road, where Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren ran the boutique Sex, around which the fledgling London punk scene revolved. The rest is history.

On June 4, Johnny Rotten, Steve Jones, Glen Matlock and Paul Cook — the Sex Pistols — played in the small upstairs room of the Lesser Free Trade Hall what may have been the most important of the 124 concerts they performed before imploding on stage on January 14, 1978, at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco — an event that symbolized the official death of the original era of punk.

In truth, the epiphany experienced by the members of the four Manchester bands transformed by the Pistols’ shows in the city (The Buzzcocks, Magazine, Joy Division and The Fall) was more aesthetic or philosophical than musical. They did not replicate their sound, but they did adopt their attitude. That night 50 years ago, the Pistols broke the traditional relationship between audience and band. It was no longer about admiring virtuosity or an elaborate stage production. They showed a direct path for anyone who wanted to express their discontent. A new way of understanding rock was born — one that would go on to shape decades of English music and, by extension, music around the world.

But that concert also speaks to how myths are made: layers of truth and fiction that settle over decades. All that remains of the show is a homemade poster, a bit of Super 8 film, a few photographs, and a ticket that, incidentally, mistakenly lists the year as 1076.

Fifty years later — though it feels like 950, as the ticket suggests — pop continues to create myths. From Johnny Rotten to Bad Bunny, from Vivienne Westwood to Marta Ortega. As for journalists, we remain determined to find “the most important concert of all time.” But this time, with far less room for myth, it is witnessed by hundreds of thousands of people live — and tens of millions more through the screens of their phones.

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