Estefanía Covadonga Ruiz Quintana, known professionally as Covi Quintana, is a Dominican singer-songwriter born in Santo Domingo on 15 February 1993 to Spanish parents. She began as an acoustic singer-songwriter in 2012, was nominated for the Latin Grammy for Best Singer-Songwriter Album in 2021, and in 2026 released her first merengue and bachata album, «Oye Eta Vaina», which received two Latin Grammy nominations. She is based in Mexico.

Origins

Quintana was born in the Dominican Republic to parents from Asturias and describes herself as fully Dominican; she grew up listening to merengue and bachata alongside Alejandro Sanz and Joaquín Sabina, and to Juan Luis Guerra as the reference point for tropical music in Spanish. She sings, plays guitar, and writes her own songs, and until her recent albums she produced much of her music herself in her bedroom.

Early albums

Her first album, «Imaginación», appeared in 2012, followed by «Aquí Estoy» (2015) and «Sin Pausa» (2018), the last of which she recorded with a band and a producer over about a year and documented in a short film. By 2019 she had been nominated four times at major Dominican awards, including for composer of the year, and she released the song «Soy Dominicana».

In September 2021 she received her first Latin Grammy nomination, in the Best Singer-Songwriter Album category, for «Mañana Te Escribo Otra Canción», a 13-song ballad-oriented album. In 2025 she was nominated for Best Pop Song as a co-writer of «Te Quiero», recorded by the Peruvian singer Nicole Zignago and written with the producer Juan Ariza.

«Oye Eta Vaina»

For years Quintana was advised by Víctor Víctor, a songwriter she admired, to stop dressing in black and make merengue and bachata. In 2026 she did, with «Oye Eta Vaina», a ten-song album covering merengue, bachata, pambiche, and folk rhythms with atabales, written almost entirely by her and produced by her longtime pianist and band director Ronny Cruz. She recorded it in the Dominican Republic with Dominican musicians, although she lives in Mexico, and it features Chimbala and the Colombian singer Andrés Cepeda. She has said the record was meant to show her more cheerful side and to bring Dominican culture to other audiences.

The album received two nominations at the 2026 Latin Grammy Awards, for Best Merengue/Bachata Album and, for the song «Temblor y Réplica», Best Singer-Songwriter Song. She has toured Mexico and Spain to present it.

Legacy

Quintana is one of the few Dominican singer-songwriters of her generation to move from the acoustic ballad into merengue and bachata while keeping her writing at the center, and her nominations from 2021 to 2026 span the singer-songwriter, pop, and tropical categories.