The past decade witnessed a remarkable proliferation of exotic charmonium-like resonances discovered at accelerators. In particular, the recently observed charged states are clearly not interpretable as q-qbar mesons. Notwithstanding the considerable advances on the experimental side, conflicting theoretical descriptions do not seem to provide a definitive picture about the nature of the so-called XYZ particles. I will discuss why the recent experimental discoveries speak in favour of the existence of compact four-quark particles (tetraquarks).