Linar de Jesús Espinal Núñez, who performs as El Chaval de la Bachata, is a Dominican bachata singer, composer, guitarist and producer. He has been recording since 1994, took bachata of the year at the Casandra awards in 2009 and bachata singer of the year at the Soberano in 2026, and has spent most of the intervening years on the nomination lists.

The accordion and the guitar

He was born on 4 December 1978 in Juncalito, a district of the municipality of Jánico, in the province of Santiago. The first instrument he set out to play was the accordion; he traded it for a guitar at seven, by which time the family had moved to the city of Santiago, where what caught him were the bachatas of Blas Durán. As a boy he collected scrap metal to sell at the market and bring money home while he was still at school.

Los Infantiles del Amargue

At thirteen he met Juan Tavárez, who ran a bachata group with his eight-year-old son Joel on guitar. Together they formed Los Infantiles del Amargue, with Espinal as lead voice and second guitar, and recorded Si te vas for the businessman Nepo Núñez. The group went on performing under a second name, Los Jóvenes del Amargue.

Sentimiento Único

In 1997, after three years with the group, he went out alone under the name El Chaval de la Bachata. Sentimiento Único came out that year on Nepo Núñez Records, and Cuando el amor se va became a standard of the genre; the record earned him a gold certification. Enfermo de amor, Para toda la vida, Para siempre, Volveré and Ayer y hoy followed on the same label.

Estoy perdido

Devuélveme todo, from 2004, carried a tribute to Luis Segura and the song Estoy perdido, which worked at home and abroad and was nominated for bachata of the year at the Casandra awards. He remade it in 2021 with La Ross María.

Donde están esos amigos

Ya me cansé, in 2007, contained Donde están esos amigos and gave him his first entry on a Billboard chart, arriving at number ten on Tropical Albums. Two years later he was up for three Casandra awards at once — bachata singer of the year, songwriter of the year and bachata of the year — and won the last of them with that song, which was also nominated at the Billboard Latin Music Awards.

The albums kept coming: Lo que me pidas, Por el maldito dinero, Sincrodestino, whose single No soy tu marido was nominated in 2017, and Mil historias. In 2014 he recorded Tres semanas, written by the Mexican Marco Antonio Solís.

Canalla

He sang Canalla with Romeo Santos on Utopía, and in 2019 appeared with him at the MetLife Stadium in New York in front of more than eighty thousand people. He has also recorded with Luis Vargas, Leonardo Paniagua and Luis Miguel del Amargue, and with Luis Segura on the four-volume record that closed that singer’s career.

Twenty-five years

He marked twenty-five years in music in October 2022 with a concert at the United Palace in New York that sold out three weeks ahead, alongside Raulín Rodríguez, Frank Reyes and Don Miguelo. The following year he released Alayah #15, a set of more than twenty songs including a vallenato tribute to the Colombian Diomedes Díaz and Contrato de amantes, written for him by Romeo Santos.

In March 2026, at the forty-first Premios Soberano, he was named bachata singer of the year.