"La cumparsita" is a tango written in 1916 by the Uruguayan musician Gerardo Matos Rodríguez, with lyrics by Pascual Contursi and Enrique Pedro Maroni. It is among the most famous and recognizable tangos of all time.Roberto Firpo, director and pianist of the orchestra that premiered the song, added to the Matos' carnival march ("La Cumparsita"), parts of his tangos "La Gaucha Manuela" and "Curda Completa". And then, "La cumparsita" was composed as it's known from then until now.

The title translates as "the little parade", and the first version was a tune with no lyrics. Later, Pascual Contursi wrote words to make the most popular version of the song. The lyrics begin: "The little parade of endless miseries..."

The song was originally a Uruguayan carnival march whose melody was composed in early 1916 by an architecture student in Montevideo, an 18-year-old man named Gerardo Hernán "Becho" Matos Rodríguez, the son of Montevideo's Moulin Rouge nightclub proprietor Emilio Matos. On 8 February 1916, Matos Rodríguez had his friend Manuel Barca show orchestra leader Roberto Firpo the music in the cafe called La Giralda. Firpo looked at the music and quickly determined that he could make it into a tango. As presented to him it had two sections; Firpo added a third part taken from his own little-known tangos "La gaucha Manuela" and "Curda completa", and also used a portion of the song "Miserere" by Giuseppe Verdi from the opera Il trovatore. Years later, Firpo reported the historic moment as follows:

Roberto Herrera is an Argentine Tango dancer born in San Salvador de Jujuy.

He began studying Argentine folk dancing at the age of 8. From 1986 to 1990 he was the principal dancer of the Ballet Popular Argentino, directed by "El Chúcaro" Santiago Ayala and Norma Viola. In 1986 he was chosen as a soloist dancer for the movie Tango Bar, which contributed to relaunching Argentine Tango on the world scene.

From 1990 to 1991 he was the principal dancer of the show Imágenes de Tango y Folklore, with the Orchestra of Horacio Salgán, choreographed by Ana María Stekelman and directed by Héctor Aure. From 1990 to 1992 he was also main dancer and choreography assistant of the Ballet Folklórico Nacional de Argentina.

In 1992 he entered the cast of the now legendary show Tango Argentino, with all the major dancers of the period, during its opening season at Lola Membrives Theatre in Buenos Aires, under the direction of Claudio Segovia. He also undertook the first of many tours of Japan, with the Orchestra of Maestro Ramos.

Julio Iglesias (born Julio José Iglesias de la Cueva; September 23, 1943) is a Spanish singer and songwriter whose romantic image, magnetic stage presence, and expressive music made him one of the best-selling artists of all time. By the early 21st century he had sold hundreds of millions of albums in more than a dozen languages. He has sold over 300 million records worldwide in 14 languages and released 77 albums. According to Sony Music Entertainment, he is one of the top 15 best-selling music artists in history. While Iglesias rose to international prominence in the 1970s and 1980s as a performer of romantic ballads, his success has continued on as he entered new musical endeavors. He is the father of singer Enrique Iglesias.

Iglesias was born in Madrid, the eldest son of Dr. Julio Iglesias Puga and María del Rosario de la Cueva y Perignat. Iglesias' father's family was from Galicia, and Iglesias' mother an Andalusian.

In the 1960s, he studied law in Madrid and was a goalkeeper for one of Real Madrid's football teams. On September 22, 1963, he was involved in a car crash, resulting in an injury to his spinal cord. He said, "I had a car accident; [a] very, very strange car accident...I lost control of the car and rolled it, resulting in what they call 'paraparexia,' which is not paraplegia. It's a compression in the [spinal] cord, in the sense of the neck...my spinal cord; and I was very, very ill for three years."  His doctors thought he would never walk again; indeed, his legs were left permanently weakened, and they continued to require therapy as of late October 2010. However, slowly, he began recovering his health. To develop and increase the dexterity of his hands, he began playing guitar. When he recovered from his accident, he resumed academic studies and traveled to the United Kingdom to study the English language, first in Ramsgate, then at Bell Educational Trust's Language School in Cambridge.