Barcelona. Musicians on stage, floodlights at full power and 5,000 attendees jumping and dancing without a safe distance. Live music was resurrected this Saturday in Barcelona for a clinical trial that seeks safe ways to celebrate massive events with Covid-19.
“It will be a unique night, enjoy it,” said a presenter minutes before the performance of Love of Lesbian, one of the main groups on the Spanish music scene, began at the Sant Jordi Palace in Barcelona.
Massive screening with antigen tests, FFP2 masks for all attendees and advanced ventilation made a party possible, an exception in a Europe almost totally closed by pandemic restrictions.
“I am very, very excited. It’s been a year and a half that we haven’t been on stage and some are already crying up here ”, shouted the leader of the band, Santi Balmes after the first song, conveniently titled Nobody on the streets.
A euphoria and emotion shared by the public
“It is incredible, very exciting. We had forgotten about this feeling of people, it is as if it were my first concert ”, Jordi Sanz acknowledged from the Sant Jordi track, the only area occupied since the stands were left empty.
“There was a lot of desire to do something different, to take a step towards normality,” said Marina Crespo, who despite the security measures preferred “to keep a distance”, “to be somewhat separate.”
Still, the feeling was of a pre-pandemic world trip: spectators jumping, dancing, hugging, chanting songs at the top of their lungs, or even drinking beer at the bars.
But behind the act jointly promoted by a group of festivals and music promoters and a hospital in the area, there is a device that, according to its organizers, makes it a safer space than a private home.
In the morning, the dance floors of three Barcelona nightclubs, closed for months, were converted into makeshift field hospitals with multiple white tents and nurses in blue practicing antigen tests, the results of which came in ten minutes.
If they gave negative, the entry saved in a mobile application was already validated. Once inside the enclosure, equipped with an advanced ventilation system, everyone must wear FFP2 masks constantly.
“We hope it is completely safe. During the following 14 days we will see how many of the attendees have been diagnosed with Covid and will report, ”explained Josep Maria Llibre, doctor at the Germans Trias i Pujol hospital in Badalona, near Barcelona.
His team already carried out a pilot test of this protocol in December in a concert hall in Barcelona with 500 attendees previously screened by Covid. After several days, none tested positive.
The objective is “to discover the way in which we can live with the Covid and do concerts in a totally safe way,” Ventura Barba, executive director of the Sónar festival in Barcelona, one of the organizers, told AFP.
“We hope this is a turning point”
This week, the renowned electronic music festival announced its cancellation for the second year in a row, like many other European competitions. “The pandemic has been horrendous for everyone, but for music in particular,” added Barba.
According to a report published by the Music Federation of Spain, the European music industry lost 76 percent of its turnover in 2020.
“It is a way to begin to make a hole in this tunnel and for the world of culture to see the light a bit or, at least, a possible way of doing things,” the leader of Love of Lesbian acknowledged yesterday. Santi Balmes, to AFP.
The pandemic forced them to delay the launch of their latest job for eight months, but they feel lucky about colleagues in the sector who “are having a really bad time and food boxes are arriving because nothing is coming in.”
Especially after this concert and the response from the public, which sold out in just a few hours, “it was a shock energetic, but it is logical, we are in a time of containment, with the handbrake on. We need to unburden ourselves, restart our old lives, ”said Balmes.
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