Today, Sala Apolo is one of the great references in musical culture and nightlife in the city. Who in Barcelona hasn't set foot on its dance floor?, whether to enjoy a concert or to dance until dawn? But few know that, in its origins, this space was known as Autopark, an amusement park located in the same venue that featured bumper cars, skating rinks, and the Coves del Drac, a ghost train that terrified generations of visitors.
It has now been 91 years since the building first opened as an amusement park. But when did music start playing there? Fast forward to 1943, the year Apolo officially opened as a dance hall, meaning it has now been welcoming dancers for more than eight decades. Sala Apolo is thus considered one of the oldest dance halls in Europe.
To talk about the history of Sala Apolo is to talk about the history of our city: how its transformation has gone hand in hand with that of Barcelona and has gone through all stages, from the Republic to the Civil War, the dictatorship, and democracy.
An amusement park in Paral·lel in the 1930s
It all began in the 1930s. After the International Exposition of 1929, the city's leisure offerings were concentrated in Montjuïc and the outskirts. But a Catalan businessman, Josep Vallès Rovira, had an absolutely revolutionary idea for the time: to to build a fully covered amusement park in the heart of the city.
That's how, in 1935, Autopark (known as L’Airette during the Republican era) opened its doors. It was equipped with domes, themed corridors, and well-known attractions like the Coves del Drac, where a small train circulated surrounded by caricatured figures. However, this first chapter lasted very little: the outbreak of the Civil War in 1936 brought the project to a halt when the park had only been open for a year and a half.
The post-war period, censorship, and the birth of the dance hall
After the war, the space reopened its doors in 1940, reconverted into Atracciones Apolo. The Francoist regime imposed the the compulsory Castilianization of Catalan names of all signage that was not in Castilian (a process that neighboring venues such as El Molino or Bataclán also went through), so the old Autopark had to adapt its name and Castilianize it.
But the moral censorship of the era also transformed the graphic image of the venue. Promotional illustrations showing female figures were heavily censored: a veil was added to the drawings of nymphs to cover their bodies, while other representations considered provocative were directly replaced by goblins with hats.
As they explained to us during the visit to Sala Apolo, the regime and the authorities of the time viewed the Poble-sec's Festa Major with suspicion because the streets filled with people from a traditionally working-class and libertarian neighborhood. For this reason, they promoted a large alternative celebration on Paral·lel, called the Festa Major del Paral·lel, with the aim of maintaining a certain control over the population and reducing the prominence of the neighborhood's popular festival.
It was in this context, in 1943, when the owners officially inaugurated the Dance Hall: the authorities forced all theaters on the avenue to join this official program, which offered a much more controlled entertainment programme.
During the 1950s, Apolo became a meeting point with a very varied offer. On the one hand, the orchestra led by Florentino Bou provided the soundtrack for dance afternoons and established itself as one of the most popular formations in Europe. On the other hand, the venue's corridors exhibited mechanical automatons from various parts of the continent, along with comic attractions such as the Casa de la Risa.
The most curious fact of those years was experienced on the roller skating rink located at the corner with Nou de la Rambla street. It was built to the official dimensions of the Catalan Skating Federation and was officially inaugurated in September 1951 with the traditional ecclesiastical blessing and a tournament between Barça, Espanyol, and Petit Club. That space led to the creation of the Apolo Patín Club, an entity that competed for six seasons in the First Division of roller hockey.
The birth of a new Apolo
With the arrival of the seventies and eighties, consumption habits changed radically. The public stopped going to traditional dance halls with live orchestras and Apolo was forced to reinvent itself or face closure.
At the end of the eighties, the decision was made to eliminate the attractions and reform the structure of the venue. Apolo left behind its stage as an amusement park to become a concert hall and nightclub. Specifically, it was in 1991 when the space was reopened and reopened in 1991 as the venue we now know as Sala Apolo Barcelona.
Since then, more than 13,000 groups and 7,000 DJs and producers have passed through its stages. In the nineties, the venue was the ideal place for medium-format concerts (1,300 people) and hosted in its early days bands that, years later, would fill stadiums, such as Coldplay, Kings of Leon, The Killers, The Hives, Tindersticks or Rufus Wainwright.
In the mid-nineties, the venue hosted the Nitsa Club, a key movement for electronic music in the city. International figures such as Jeff Mills, Carl Craig, Laurent Garnier, Justice, Ellen Allien or Maceo Plex have played its DJ booth sharing nights with local scene references such as DJ Sideral or John Talabot. Today, Nitsa Club remains one of the venue's flagship nights and offers a program that embraces everything from techno, house or indie to reggae, trap, dub or hip-hop.
In addition to its nightlife, today Sala Apolo does not stop during the day. The building hosts initiatives such as LAB, a platform dedicated to innovation, technology and activism, where the annual Bala Perdida band contest stands out; L'Estudi, focused on audiovisual production and musical training through Aula Apolo; and even Apolo Symphonic Orchestra, an orchestral recording project focused on local musicians.
Its daily activity is distributed among the different spaces:
- Room 1: is the main historic space, intended for large concerts and night sessions.
- Room 2: space inaugurated in 2006 and remodeled in 2017, with a more underground and industrial aesthetic inspired by cities like Berlin or Detroit.
- Room 3 (3LOGY): outdoor space intended for the activity of local collectives such as Churros con Chocolate, La Cangri or El Sarau del Drac. It also hosts artistic interventions within the Art Meets Apolo project and events such as the Cineclub 113, held this year.
- Room 5: is the newest and most welcoming room. It is an intimate space with capacity for a hundred people, designed for acoustic concerts, presentations and afternoon sessions such as the Apologia cycle.
All this trajectory received special recognition in 2018, when it celebrated the 75th anniversary of its transformation into a dance hall. On the occasion of the anniversary, a special program was organized, the documentary La Juventud Baila, directed by Marc Crehuet, was premiered, and the historical book 75 Años sin parar de Bailar, written by Eva Espinet, was published.
Nearly a century after its first attractions welcomed visitors, Sala Apolo remains one of Barcelona's defining cultural spaces—a home for live music, local creativity, and new artistic voices. Here's to many more years of Apolo.