Melendi

Ramón Melendi Espina arrived at the offices of Madrid record labels without a polished demo or any conservatory manners. Before stepping into a professional studio, he worked as a waiter in Oviedo, tried to become a soccer player in the Real Oviedo academy and gave a short-lived rock band called El Bosque de Sherwood a shot. When he recorded his solo debut in 2003, nobody bet a euro on that bold blend of flamenco rumba and street pop.

Sin noticias de Holanda succeeded thanks to commercial radio stations and the choice of "Con la luna llena" as the official theme of the Tour of Spain cycling race in 2004. The album sold more than four hundred thousand physical copies in a market hit hard by digital file sharing. Melendi filled arenas with dreadlocks down to his shoulders, lyrics about small-time dealing in parks and choruses sung at the top of people's lungs.

Nobody in the industry saw that neighborhood phenomenon coming.

In 2005, he confirmed his commercial breakthrough with Que el cielo espere sentao. The songs kept the same festive rhythm, but the Asturian musician's personal life began to spiral out of control offstage.

The Price of a Character and the Acoustic Transformation

In November 2007, an incident aboard a regular flight between Madrid and Mexico forced the captain to turn back and land under police escort. The episode made headlines across the national press. The artist himself later admitted that he needed to hit the brakes before he ruined his career completely.

The plane had to return to Barajas just two hours after takeoff.

His transition began in 2008 with the album Curiosa la cara de tu padre. Melendi cut off his dreadlocks, moved away from lyrics about illegal drugs, and began refining a melodic sound aimed at a broader audience. But the change was more than a cosmetic makeover. On Volvamos a empezar, released in 2010, he dropped the rumba and built arrangements around electric guitars in the style of Anglo-American rock.

Two years later, he released Lágrimas desordenadas and agreed to make his debut as a coach on the first Spanish edition of the TV talent show La Voz. On screen, he came across as an empathetic, level-headed figure who led the ratings in 2012 with more than five million viewers for his Sunday shows.

Television expanded the family business.

From Dubbing Booths to Stadium Shows

In 2014, he released Un alumno más and moved part of his operations base to Latin America. Ballads such as "La promesa" opened doors at packed venues in Mexico, Colombia and Argentina without relying on the provocation of his early days. His raspy voice fit perfectly with the sentimental ballad format built for radio hits.

In 2019, DreamWorks Animation hired the Asturian singer to voice Grimmel the Cruel in the Spanish-language version of How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World. Besides adjusting his dialogue at the recording booth, he wrote the film's main theme for Spain, "El cielo nunca cambiará." It was his only major foray into mainstream cinema, squeezed in between music production weeks and studio sessions.

So anniversary releases became a box-office draw. In 2023, he released 20 años sin noticias, a re-recording of his early songs with artists such as Manuel Carrasco and Hens, earning seventeen weeks at number one on the national sales chart.

For the 2026 arena tour, the production team put together a setup with two hundred square meters of LED screens and ninety-six line array speakers, selling out twelve thousand tickets in Madrid within three hours of the virtual box office opening.