After a personnel change as some of the original members grew up, they experienced some backlash in the country for their song "El Alacrán" ("The Scorpion"), an innocent pop tune that made a coincidental reference to a clandestine group that was one of Francisco Franco's staunchest opponents.

In 1973, the future founder of Menudo, Edgardo Diaz, who was a medical student in Spain and lived next door to the Aguirreses, joined the band's entourage as a sound expert.

Thanks in part to him, Alfred D. Herger—who became known as the biggest pandillero in Puerto Rico—and Felix Santiesteban, the group became a teen favorite in the Caribbean island.

In 1975, the band was received by a huge crowd of Puerto Rican fans at the Iberia Airlines terminal at Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport at San Juan.

[1] Puerto Rican actor and singer Juan Carlos Morales, who himself was once accepted by Menudo but who had to pull out of the group because his mother did not allow him to join it, announced in 2016, that he and Spaniard producing company El Trampolin are developing a television series largely based on both La Pandilla and Menudo's hits, about a male homosexual couple who adopt four boys and one girl and form a tribute band named #La Pandilla.