Festivals that close at eleven at night?

2023-12-03 18:39:12

One of the strangest sensations we have these days in the Primavera Sound from Sao Paulo is to warn that the party ends just when it usually comes to a head in Spain: At eleven o’clock at night, this Saturday, the concert of the star group of the dayThe Killers. And the same on Sunday with The Cure. And then? Well nothing. End of the festival. To sleep. Or wherever.

It is not a rare case. The exception is us, in Spain, where Primavera Sound itself can program headliners like Rosalía or Blur at two in the morning, and then continue offering more concerts and DJs. And fill the venue at those hours with an audience (family-child profile included) delighted to squeeze out life and the night until dawn if necessary.

While, at Lollapalooza in Paris, the ‘motomami’ came out to sing at 9:30 p.m., and the ParisLonchamp racecourse lowered its shutters at midnight. In the Chicago edition, this summer, Billie Eilish at 8:45 p.m. and home. That is the norm in Europe and the Americas. No room for high exceptions: on a certain night in 2012, Bruce Springsteen’s power was cut off in Hyde Park because his final duet with Sir Paul McCartney exceeded ‘curfew’, closing time, 10:30 p.m.

With all this I do not intend to defend the time limitation, only to tell what there is, and place the context in the floating debate in Barcelona. There is a friction of delicate resolution between the right to rest of neighboring citizens and the notion of general good, here embodied by a cultural, economic and reputation engine of the city such as festivals, and is only resolved with dialogue and mutual understanding. In the case of Primavera, it is worth remembering that the festival has been in the Fòrum longer than many of its current neighbors, and that its move to that end of the city, in 2005, although it may not seem like it now, was a movement of some risk.

Precisely this exception explains, at least in part, why crowds of foreign audiences flock to Spain, attracted by the promise of ‘afterhours’ excitement that they are deprived of in their countries. It is part of the fun package they associate us with, although lax time was not made for them: it is part of our cultural tradition, in which we associate music with the night. Let’s keep everything in mind when the debate heats up again, which it will.