Whoever believed that Amaia Montero’s return to La Oreja de Van Gogh was going to be an all-day controversy to monopolize a couple of headlines, can review their preconceptions about the energy that a force of nature that we did not expect is willing to invest in this issue: the band’s fan clubs. It is some of these groups who are crying foul, and some of them are even closing their doors, due to the return of the original vocalist and the bad manners with which her replacement, Leire, has been expelled from the band.
The story so far. Basically: Amaia Montero was the original vocalist of the band from 1996 to 2007, a period in which the group achieved great success with albums such as ‘Copperpot’s Journey’. He left the band in 2007 to start a solo career, officially without conflict, although the relationship with the band deteriorated. Her personal career had ups and downs and public health problems that affected her image, including difficult moments and turning her into a very juicy meme for social networks. Her replacement, Leire Martínez, was a vocalist for 16 years, with five successful albums and concerts, but without reaching Amaia’s level of popularity.
Leire’s departure in October 2024 was official and peaceful, but suffered internal tensions. I would speak later that she had felt displaced and that she regretted not having given a decent closure to her time in the band. In October 2025, Amaia returns as a vocalist, just a year after Leire’s departure, which unleashed a strong division between fans of both singers on social networks. The band deleted references to Leire, increasing the conflict and Pablo Benegas, co-founder, left the band without explanation.
Complete cessation of business. However, Amaia Montero’s return to La Oreja de Van Gogh has generated a notable division among the group’s fans, triggering protests and even closing several fan clubs. This phenomenon reflects a deep discordance in the community’s perception and values regarding the group’s decisions, something that is undoubtedly difficult to manage from a fan club. For example, clubs The Goonies and LOVG Lyrics have announced their dissolution, alleging that the way in which Amaia’s return has been planned does not coincide with their values of respect for the history of the group or for Leire.
It’s Amazon’s fault. At least, it’s the fault that yesterday the sale of tickets for the recently announced reunion tour “So many things to tell”, which starts in spring 2026, had to be suspended momentarily. He Massive problem on Amazon Web Services servers which affected ticket sales started a few hours later than planned, but demand was very high: they sold more than 100,000 tickets in one hour and they had to hang the sign sold out (and extend dates) in several Spanish cities, such as Madrid, Bilbao and Barcelona.
Nostalgia vs. fandom. The good result of ticket sales reveals a clear contradiction among fans. On the one hand, there are the hardline fans who are filling the band’s official networks with comments like “Van Gogh’s Ear is not coming back, Judas’s Kiss is coming back,” and on the other, the 10,000 buyers who are selling out tickets in large venues for a bath of genuine nineties nostalgia. Van Gogh’s Ear is showing that what interests him are not the renegades or the (comparatively much less) fans of Leire, but rather making cash with a return, that of Amaia, which is pure distilled Gen X nostalgia. That is possibly why Pablo Benegas left the training.
It’s not the same. This same week, Jotdown has published an article in which they influence this abandonment and make it clear that La Oreja de Van Gogh, without Benegas, is not the same: he is the composer of all their classic songs and his flight from Amaia’s return shows that there is no will to restart a coherent creative trajectory, but that the band is only going to express the nostalgia of their old hits, perhaps without a desire for continuity. Without Benegas, without Leire and with the fans against it, it remains to be seen if there is a future beyond a few very substantial comeback concerts.
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