Music

This dude puts all other Iron Maiden fans to shame

by Richard Howard

Deadheads and pale-imitation Phish fans (Phans?) – looks like you’re gonna need to step your game up.

Vice Spain recently caught up with Fernando Leal, a diehard Iron Maiden fan who has travelled the world in order to see the metal band an astounding 230 times. After the Spaniard first saw the band in the late 80’s as they supported their Somewhere in Time release, he developed an obsession that hasn’t waned since. Besides attending every Spanish concert since, Leal has travelled the globe going as far away from home as Mexico and Australia to attend Maiden shows. He’ll do anything to make a concert – once, he claims, he absconded from his military barracks (in full combat gear) so he wouldn’t miss one of their Spanish performances. Awesome.

So how does he afford this globe-trekking and the now-pretty-pricey Iron Maiden tickets?  Is he some kind of dot-com millionaire or a well paid corporate superstar by day, perhaps. Nah – he just doesn’t care about anything else: “I don’t have kids, a car, or a mortgage, or whatever, so I have some extra money. For various health reasons I don’t drink, either, so I don’t actually go out that much. I just make sure to book tickets early, and most of the time I sleep in the airport. It’s cheaper.”

I love this guy. If there’s one comment that encompasses his dedication, it’s the following where he pish-poshes your silly tropical getaway:  “This is how I spend my vacations. Why would I sit on a beach for 15 days? That’d be a complete waste of time.”