Musician blocked from preforming at 18th WFYS at Miami airport

Reincidentes album cover

Music, song and dance was a dynamic backdrop to the political discussions which took place this December in Quito, Ecuador at the 18th World Festival of Youth and Students.

All that partying spirit wasn't without the interference of imperialism however.

Singer and bassist Fernando Madina of the Spanish punk-rock band Reincidentes was detained at Miami airport en route to the festival. The group was supposed to play a headlining act at the opening ceremonies.

Instead, the lead singer vanished. It took over 48 hours for his family back at home to finally learn what of his arrest after they reported his disappearance to the Spanish National Police as nothing had been heard of his whereabouts, according to the Spanish-language version of Rollling Stone.

Madina claims airport immigration officials also told his band members he was not detained and had probably gone sightseeing.

In fact, the lead singer had been handcuffed and shuttled out of the airport with twenty other people, to the neighboring Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center on the charge of "drunkenness and disturbing public order." Madina was held in a cell with no access to a phone or translation. Detained Saturday, it took until Monday morning for a judge via video conference to exonerate him of any wrongdoing leading to his release.
The experience was much more like an arrest than a detention, Madina told the Spanish newsite TerceraInformación, saying that while he was animated when talking on the airplane he was not drunk and had only had a few beers on the long flight.

The band had a similar experience in October 2010, when guitarist Juan Manuel Rodriguez was supposedly confused with a narco trafficker and detained without explanation on a flight transfer passing through Miami for two hours.



The Italian group Banda Bassotti, a ska-punk band formed in 1987 in Rome and still going strong, did make it to the festival however.

Banda Bassotti's songs focus on pro-socialist, pro-people and anti-Fascist issues.  Inspired by The Clash and The Specials, their name jokingly derives from the Italian version of the Disney characters The Beagle Boys.

The group rocked the close of the festival.  This is their entire performance: