Entering a concert hall is an experience that no screen or algorithm has managed to replicate. Listening to music three meters from the stage, feeling the vibration of the bass rumbling through the walls, noticing the emotion of the audience, and enjoying live music has nothing to do with consuming digital content from the sofa. Attending a concert hall is a collective act, a communal experience where music ceases to be an art to be listened to alone and transforms into skin, sweat, and shared emotion.
The reality, however, is that our concert halls are experiencing an increasingly clear contradiction. While large stadiums hang the sold out sign months in advance and the music industry breaks historical revenue records driven by mega-festivals, local venues continue to fight the same misunderstanding of a quarter-century ago. They are still seen as nightlife, as an annoying acoustic conflict, or as an obstacle to urban development and the gentrification of neighborhoods.
This has been, in part, one of the great demands presented at the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Association of Concert Halls of Catalonia (ASACC), which gathered the country's musical community at Poble Espanyol. The meeting avoided official discourse and served to take stock of recent decades and highlight the dangers threatening the sector.
Twenty-five years to change the rules of the game
When the association started in 1999, driven by pioneering venues such as Apolo, Razzmatazz, Bikini, Salamandra in L'Hospitalet, or Clap in Mataró, concert halls did not even have the right to any kind of subsidy or public aid. They did not exist on the map of cultural policies of the administrations. They were treated for all purposes as cocktail bars with permission to have a stage, but without access to aid for programming or for improving soundproofing or infrastructure.
It has been thanks to the collective work over twenty-five years through ASACC that this situation has been changed. With Carmen Zapata's management for 18 years, the first lines of public support were achieved in 2007, the four-year battle to reverse the 21% cultural VAT imposed by the Rajoy government was led, and the entertainment law was modified to allow entry to minors under 16.
Xavier Marcé, Culture Councillor of Barcelona City Council, has acknowledged the importance of the sector: "Concert halls are the lungs of our musical ecosystem; before filling stadiums or headlining festivals, all artists have had to go through the sweat and proximity of a hall," and he concluded by emphasizing the impact of these spaces on urban life: "Halls do not generate noise, they generate historical and emotional memory."
In the same vein, Edgar Garcia Casellas, director of the Catalan Institute of Cultural Enterprises (ICEC), has highlighted the evolution of the work between the administration and the entity during this quarter century: "We have been maturing the recognition of the reality of the halls, not only as an economic space, but as a space for emerging talent and the creation of social fabric." Garcia stressed that halls are part of the cultural system with the same guarantees as any other facility.
Lluís Torrents, co-director of the Razzmatazz venue and president of ASACC, summarized it thus: "Joint action has been the only tool to defend the venues before institutions. Without these proximity spaces, the base of local music remains unprotected." Afterwards, Naiara Lasa (director of Sala Apolo and member of the ASACC board of directors) clearly stated that "We, the venues, are culture".
And it seems obvious, but even today it is still necessary to repeat it at negotiation tables. Before Estopa, Rosalía, Mishima, Sopa de Cabra or Els Amics de les Arts filled pavilions or headlined international festivals, they had to convince fifty people listening to them with a beer in hand in small spaces. The proximity venue is the laboratory where the artist makes mistakes, takes risks, and learns the craft. If this first space fails, live music has no future.
When beverage consumption has to finance creation
Besides looking back with pride, ASACC's anniversary also took advantage of the event to highlight current situations. One of the most poignant phrases of the day was: "We end up depending on beverage consumption for culture to exist." This is the real danger threatening the sector. When music depends on the beers sold at the bar, taking risks with new proposals is almost impossible. If you need to fill the venue every night to cover expenses, you end up playing it safe and only programming what you know will work.
The job of finding and supporting new artists carries an economic risk that independent venues can hardly sustain alone if they are equated with any night bar. Without stable public support, cultural programming runs the risk of being subjected to the profitability of the bar.
Gentrification, urban planning, and the future of venues in the city
The other major battlefront has to do with the urban habitat. In cities like Barcelona, subjected to strong real estate pressures, the coexistence between nightlife and neighborhood rest becomes a difficult terrain to manage.
In this regard, the claim for the figure of the Agent of Change (the principle of the agent of change) has been raised as an urgent requirement. This rule establishes that when a new residential development or urban reform is installed around an existing concert hall, the responsibility for soundproofing, isolating, and adapting to the sound impact must fall on the construction company or the new developer, and not on the venue that has been working on that street for decades.
ASACC warns that if live music ends up being expelled to industrial estates or large peripheral venues, the city loses its neighborhood cultural network. According to the association, defending these spaces is protecting a business, but it also prevents the musical offer from being reduced to large festivals and screens.
After the interventions, the celebration continued at Sala Upload with the projection of a mapping that covered the country's musical spaces. A snack among programmers, musicians, and sector representatives brought an end to a day that, twenty-five years later, once again reminded us that it is in local venues where live music keeps its beat.