Cruïlla, a festival with an international lineup and local soul

The Cruïlla is a large-format festival, with an international lineup that does not exclude local talent. From July 12 to 14, the Parc del Fòrum hosts a macro-festival that wants to pamper its audiences as much as its artists. This year, highlights include David Byrne or Jack White, two former leaders of legendary bands like Talking Heads and White Stripes, big names like Gilberto Gil, electronic legends like Orbital, or local artists like Ramon Mirabet, Joan Dausà, or La Pegatina, without forgetting emerging talents like Núria Graham or Joana Serrat.

The Cruïlla wants to be an antidote against the ills that afflict large-format festivals. It is possible to see all the headliners without fear of missing your favorite artist because they perform simultaneously. It limits the number of tickets for sale to guarantee the comfort of attendees and avoid agonizing queues and impossible crowds. It takes special care with details such as environmental impact, introducing novelties such as biodegradable cups or technologies that reduce energy consumption, although, with humility, Herreruela does not want to claim "salon environmentalism" medals. And it also pays special attention to including local artists in the lineup, avoiding the feeling of being at a festival that could just as easily be held in Barcelona as in any corner of an increasingly globalized world. Finally, it proudly defends musical eclecticism and avoids being a festival biased towards a specific musical style. An event, then, that, above the big numbers and records in each edition, prefers to offer a comfortable, musically rich, and coherent experience with a world in which the public listens to music by streaming and no longer assimilates music based on the album format, but loves songs by different artists and cherishes moments more than formats.

Music festivals are complex production machines, which year after year experience cycles of creation, conception, and production that demand flexible and changing human teams. Untangling this situation is not easy, and Herreruela, perhaps influenced by his past scientific training (he studied computer science and telecommunications in Mataró, and then worked in the international finance sector before dedicating himself to music promotion) proudly hints that Cruïlla is a pioneer in the use of technologies, from pricing strategy, which changes according to marketing channels, to innovation in details such as biodegradable cups, the implementation of low-consumption technologies, wristbands that avoid the use of money inside the venue, or the inclusion of scenic shows, this year by La Fura or a sample of the Aquelarre de Cervera.

A macro-festival on a human scale, which this year will have a monumental central stage designed by the artist Lluís Danés, and which also aspires one day to open up even more to the sea and overcome the limits of a venue ideal for festivals, the Parc del Fòrum, but which perhaps has too much concrete and too little sea breeze.