by Miguel Gutierrez
MADRID (AP) — Roberto Santos, 55, stands out among other “Swifties” for his decades-long devotion to American pop icon Taylor Swift, and the Spaniard has received so many gifts from her team in honor of it — enough to fill a room in his apartment, which he calls his haven.
While Swift, 34, was preparing for shows on her Eras Tour in Madrid on Wednesday and Thursday, Santos, who runs a dental prosthetics lab in the Spanish capital, displayed items including Swift’s limited-edition platinum disc award, signed photos, recordings and sneakers bearing both their names.
Santos said in an interview, “Sometimes I wake up at night, turn on the light and look back a little, and say to myself: ‘What are you doing?’ … I just look, it calms me down, and I go back to sleep.”
“She means everything to me; I’ve been following her since 2011… I already had a feeling she would be a big star. If I had that same feeling about the lottery, I would be rich,” Santos said.
He said he became the only person to travel twice from Spain for Swift shows after seeing her perform in Dublin in 2018. Santos said her management team added Santos and his wife Inmaculada to an exclusive fan list and sent them gifts and invitations, including an all-expenses-paid trip to Los Angeles last year.
“If I was 18 or 20, I think I might have gone a little crazy … but now everything seems more mature and calm,” said Santos, who has Swift-themed tattoos on his arms and ankle.
He has not yet been able to meet him in person. A proposed meeting in Oslo was cancelled because of the pandemic.
Santos is particularly grateful to Swift and her team for thinking about older fans, and “transmitting those values” through their art.
Swift’s record-breaking Eras Tour has boosted the local economy. In Madrid, hotel occupancy rates for the concert dates have risen to an average of 90%.
This article is generated from an automated news agency feed without any modifications to the text.
