Rosalía gives ‘Omega’ to Barcelona on a night to look at the sky | News from Catalonia

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The pyromusical closed the Merçè with the Catalan singer and Peret as sound winners

The 2024 Mercè festivities conclude, as is tradition, with the Pyromusical show at the Font Màgica in Montjuïc. Photo: Gianluca BattistaGianluca Battista

An hour earlier, the prudent and cautious ones were already there, those who want to avoid someone very tall right in front of them, even if you have to look up, and those who leave home early because they even enjoy the journey thinking about what awaits them. The more organized groups made circles on the floor sitting on mats while the megaphone set the mood for the wait with music from the artists who had performed at the festivals that were about to go down in history. All that was missing was the Piromusical, which everyone was waiting for while the people continued to flow through the queue on Paseo María Cristina. The Piromusical, that common element of many patron saint festivals that in other places receives less pompous names because there is no other music than that of the thunderous rockets. Meanwhile, the Antonio kiosk, one of the few survivors from other times, with its sunflower seeds and sweets, was making a killing on the Paralelo, right next to the crowd, selling soft drinks to tourists. More than ever it was a picture of a popular festival. La Mercé 2024 was coming to an end and Rosalía would put music to the rocketry.

Ten minutes before 10:00 p.m. the first rocket sounded and the crowd swarmed. Those who were sitting stood up, the circles and mats disappeared and the most restless began to look up. There was only one drone but you had to exercise your neck. Ahead of us was half an hour of not looking down or head down. Two more rockets, in case someone had fallen asleep and it was time to turn off the public lights leaving the immense space in darkness. Her voice sounded, childish and happy and she said that Barcelona was the city in the world that she liked the most. She could have gone off script and said that it was Villafeliz de Babia, but that didn’t happen. Moments later her voice sounded. Disappointment and the sky was filled with red with enormous flowers that resembled peonies opening in the darkness. These were the first moments but already strobe effects with intermittent flashes were hanging from the heights amidst the first astonishment of the crowd, caught by the pleasure of seeing what they had seen so many times. Shortly after, the premiere of Omegaa hybrid ballad with urban sparks, flamenco rhythm and contained tension, was partially deafened by the explosions while the most interested public made efforts to listen to it. Premiering a new song at the most crowded event of the festivities was a nice detail, a display of promotional intelligence and an example of marketing, but the lyrics could hardly be followed, not counting the star’s accent.

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Rosalía, in charge of the soundtrack for the fireworks collection, made the list that her will, memories and preferences dictated to her. So there is nothing to say, tastes, as we know, are more individual than wallet and everyone has the right to have their own. The musical selection had fifteen titles, of which four were by Rosalía, who came in part to talk about her book. Of the others, only one local presence, by the way the most applauded of the repertoire, a Gypsy witch by Peret finished off with more peonies, fountains and waterfalls while columns of fire sprang from the ground in Rammstein style that marked the climax of the end of the first part. The second was very short, just two songs –I Wanna Be Yours of Arctic Monkeys y Last Nite by the Strokes – which did not have the impact that the latter has in concert. White reflections dotted the sky next to golden palm trees while, with hardly any sense of time passing, the show had almost reached its halfway point.

And there were still no open mouths. Either we have become cosmopolitan or the act of being amazed as before is a thing of the past. Because there were hardly any children astride each other, which surely has to do with the lateness of procreation and the consequent loss of resistance with weights. The next beautiful moment came with I Believe Caroline Polachek’s excellent half-time performance was staged in the sky with hundreds of red dots falling slowly like a visual manna that exploded two hundred meters away to begin its descent. It was the third climax of the night, which had previously had another moment of excitement with millionaire, Rosalía’s song, which part of the audience danced to, as if it were a disco. It was also the only piece in which Catalan was played, duly submerged in Rosalía’s urban slang so as not to unnecessarily evoke Jacint Verdaguer.

Crackling, whistling rockets, little fish (figures that spin and move rapidly changing direction), what in Guatemala they call Billion of Tourists, a term here recovered by our knowledge of the subject to define a bunch of effects emitting white light that spin crazily through the sky like tourists in Barcelona?, and palm trees and flowers in the opening the size of Camp Nou set the tone for Elvis Presley in the final stretch of a repertoire that had a Jamaican accent in its first part, danceable in the middle and Arabizing in the last. And the songs did not sound choppy and overlapping, but in generous fragments that did not transmit a sensation of vertigo or urgency, as if contrasting the rhythm with which gunpowder, nitrates, chlorides and carbonates, such unevocative names, traced ephemeral paths in the sky.

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And finally the big moment arrived, the big one oooooooohhhh that allows us to exhale what remains of us as creatures, that fascination that generates the marvelous. It was almost at the farewell, while the CUUUUUuuuuute and white-coloured explosions and dozens and dozens of multicoloured rockets began their beautiful agony, brief and intense, striking and fleeting. Shortly afterwards, other explosions marked the end, the crowd began to disperse and some cleaning trucks appeared on patrol along the part of Rius i Taulet that descends from Poble Espanyol as an unmistakable sign that the party had faded. The megaphone indicated that it was time to go to the Guardia Urbana to pick up the lost children. Wednesday, a working day, was approaching. But cheer up, it’s almost the weekend.

OMEGAAAAAA 🎟️🎟️🎟️🎟️🎟️🎟️🎟️🎟️🎟️🎟️🎟️🎟️🎟️🎟️🎟️🎟️🎟️🎟️🎟️25/9
Con Ralphieeeee Choooooooooooooo 🎢🎢🎢🎢🎢🎢🎢🎢🎢🎢🎢🎢🎢🎢🎢🎢🎢🎢🎢🎢🎢🎢🎢🎢🎡🎡🎡🎡🎡🎡🎡🎡🎡🎡🎡🎡🎡🎡🎡 pic.twitter.com/t2RCVYTtWP

— ROSAL IS A (@rosalia) September 23, 2024

Barcelona City Council has estimated that one million people have attended the shows scheduled for the Mercè festivities over the last three nights, which ended on Tuesday night with the traditional fireworks display. Barcelona’s Councillor for Culture and Creative Industries, Xavier Marcé, in an appearance to assess the festivities, highlighted the “exemplary behaviour from a civic point of view” of the citizens and the fact that there has been “nothing relevant in terms of security conflicts”.

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