2023-07-28 21:54:38
The first to fall was the Reggaeton Beach Festival. The Madrid City Council denied him the license due to problems in his mobility plan, security and noise levels. The DCODE followed. In his case, for not arriving in time to get a headliner “at the height” of Lewis Capaldi, who fell at the end of June, leaving the event with barely two months of room for manoeuvre. But there was still one more. Primavera Sound announced that it will not return to the capital in 2024 as it has a venue “with guarantees”. This news ended a week, the last one, apparently tragic for music macro-festivals: Is the model running out?
Primavera Sound will not be held in Madrid in 2024 because it does not have a venue “with guarantees”
Further
“These are very different cases,” says Nando Cruz, a cultural and cultural journalist and author of the book macrofestivals. The black hole of music (Peninsula), in which he analyzed its ins and outs. Indeed, the problem with the Reggaeton Beach Festival was the venue where it was to be held, located in Villaverde. A space inaugurated this summer, which proved to be unprepared for an activity of this magnitude, both at Mad Cool and at the Harry Styles concert held in July.
In the first, due to complaints from residents for exceeding the maximum noise levels allowed during its three days. The second, due to the kilometric queues that accumulated at the doors of the British singer’s show, as well as the chaotic departure of its 65,000 spectators.
The José Luis Martínez Almeida town hall denied the license for the Reggaeton Beach Festival to be held at the Iberdrola Music venue, alleging that “the adequate security or evacuation conditions are not guaranteed for an event of these characteristics.” The decision was communicated on July 19. A day later, the DCODE announced that they were canceling their 2023 edition, which was going to host the Campus of the Complutense University of Madrid on September 9.
The organization explained that they had not been able to “offer a lineup to match” after the cancellation of the tour of their main claim, Lewis Capaldi. The singer announced at the end of June that he was going to take a break “for now” after his Tourette’s syndrome made it difficult for him to finish his Glastonbury concert days early. His loss caused the team to work “against the clock”. However, “the little time for maneuver” and the “closed agendas of the artists” prevented them from getting a new name that could compensate for the absence of the British artist. “They cannot replace him because the success of the DCODE is not based on the festival’s own brand, but rather on the artist who brings together so many people”, argues Nando Cruz in this regard.
The bleeding had not ended. Despite the fact that it had not yet been confirmed that Primavera Sound would repeat the experience in Madrid in 2024, on July 21 the doubts were cleared up. The organization made public that, for the moment, it will not return to the capital. After its chaotic first edition held last June, they concluded that “the city does not have a venue capable of hosting an event of our magnitude and format with guarantees in terms of public demands, production requirements and musical display.” ”.
“Despite the fact that the balance was more than satisfactory on a musical level, the expectations we had were not met and the experience of the public due to certain logistical aspects was not what was desired”, explained Almudena Herrero, director of the Madrid edition of the festival, which concluded: “The necessary conditions are not met.” It should be remembered that the debut of the event in the capital, in which artists such as Depeche Mode, Rosalía and Villano Antillano performed, was marked by heavy rains that caused the cancellation of its first day, planned for Thursday, June 8.
The concerts on Friday and Saturday did continue, but they were diminished by the traffic jams at the entrance to the City of Rock and the collapse in the queues that formed especially on Saturday night; in which there were those who had to wait up to more than three hours to catch the shuttles that took from Arganda del Rey to different parts of the city.
“It seems that anyone can do it, and no”
Aware that the casuistry of each cancellation has been different, Nando Cruz extracts that what they have in common is the “observation that it is not so easy to mount a macro-festival”. “It seems that any city that wants one can get it just like that. And no, it’s very complicated.”
“In the DCODE it is added that what has failed them is the headliner. In the world there are many macro-festivals, but there are not so many headliners capable of filling that venue. With which, if it fails you, the festival will sink you”, and adds that this “is proof that what you are really putting together is a macro-concert with a few fill-in groups and a headliner that you could have put on a football stadium”.
In the world there are many macro-festivals, but there are not so many headliners capable of filling their venues
Nando Cruz — Cultural journalist
In view of the fact that even so, more macro-festivals appear every year, rather than in the face of exhaustion of the model, what is denoted is a fatigue: “It is beginning to become clear that there are not people willing to go to so many festivals.” In part, due to the conditions that are taking place. “People are starting to get fed up with being mistreated in these venues and are complaining more and more. He demands habitable conditions in these spaces, to be able to have a more or less good time, that they are not cheating him ”, he indicates.
A negative context to which should be added the controversy caused by what has been the battlefield for festival consumers since last year: ‘cashless’ bracelets. Mad Cool, Reggaeton Beach Festival, FIB, Love the 90’s and a long etcetera of events of this type impose minimum amounts and charge management fees in order to recover the amounts that were not spent within the venues. Practices that, from Facua-Consumers in Action and OCU (Consumer User Organization) consider “abusive” and have denounced.
Who asked for these enclosures to exist?
Nando Cruz appreciates that “the administrations will have to get their act together and not cede these spaces to free will and let everyone do what they want”. “When its control grows, it will be seen which festivals can survive complying with all the regulations and which will have to be cancelled.” The journalist goes back to the mid-2000s to explain the germ of the proliferation of this type of proposal. It was then that city councils and autonomous communities discovered that the festivals were a great tourist attraction to generate consumption.
“We have spent more than a decade in which any medium-sized municipality wants to have its festival because that puts it on the map, makes it look modern and brings a lot of people,” he comments about a climate that led to the appearance of “promoters from under the stones”. They began to offer themselves to the town halls to lend them venues, assuring them: “I’m going to bring you the best groups of the moment, a lot of people are going to come and we’re all going to make money.” This is how the boom for the macrofestivals.
A type of event that, although it could have been hosted in football stadiums, its characteristics led companies to bid to prefer to build new spaces. Being inside the cities has the handicap of being surrounded by people and immediately generating neighborhood problems. But above all, as Cruz states: “In these venues, the granting of bars depends on the venue itself. That is, all the beer that is drunk inside does not go to the pockets of the organizers. Also, they don’t want a concert that starts at 10pm and ends at 12pm; they need a shift from 4:00 p.m. to 3:00 a.m..”
“That is why what many festivals are asking for is spaces where they can bring together 80,000 people which, of course, not all cities have because they are not spaces that any citizen has demanded. Certain businessmen have sued it, ”he explains. From here he raises two other reflections. On the one hand, understanding that the question is not so much “why cities are not prepared to host these big events, but why a city should have a space that works for only three days a year simply because it is in the interest of the owner’s pocket.” festival”.
Many festivals ask for spaces to gather 80,000 people which, of course, not all cities have, because no citizen has sued them
Nando Cruz — Cultural journalist
On the other: “Why should we swallow this way of consuming live music totally abhorrent and based on having people locked up for hours and days, in some cases at unbearable temperatures, just so they can drink beer while the bands are playing? in the background in two, three or eight scenarios? To which, in addition, you cannot access because obviously you can only be in one at a time ”.
The ideal festival for the future
It is difficult to predict what will happen to the future of this type of event. The cultural journalist defends that “a change in trend” will have to appear, which happens because “the best thing is not to have the biggest festival, but the one that guarantees the best conditions for the public.” One of the most repeated phrases in the huge queues that collapsed at the exit of Mad Cool on its last night, on a quagmire, in the dark, and that lasted for hours that gave time until dawn, was: “I don’t think repeat”.
“People can swallow the discomfort once, but if you treat them fatally again, they will begin to say, as is already happening: ‘I’m not coming back here.’ And this sentence is a condemnation. There is no marketing campaign to reverse it. I hope that the festivals begin to understand that the headliner of the future is not going to be one group or the other. If not comfort ”, she concludes.
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