I can also write by putting on dark glasses. Like Julian Casablancas, not caring about anything, forgiving your lives and stretching out on the floor while I perform. It's a way of going on stage and doing the job, the only difference between us is that he's up and I'm down, but I can have the same attitude. And since it's about writing a chronicle about a night at Primavera, and not just about one of the two important concerts of the night, I think I'll forgive Primavera and The Strokes and also, by the way, Barcelona. If you provoke me.
Going to Primavera this year was already worth it just for the subtle mechanisms that reactivate memory: that mix of beer and urine smell that surrounds the ascent of the Museu Blau, those movable letters made with fairground bulbs that make the name of Europe's most important music festival dance, the wristband, the police scratching your pockets, the encounter with the moon in a wide sky that you don't usually see, and suddenly that other smell, unique, localized, ours and unmistakable of a sewage treatment plant. We are at Primavera after two years of celibacy, of reclusion, and therefore what you miss you didn't even expect to miss. We went to some concerts last year, of course, but not to a big festival where as soon as you enter, the beats of the amphitheater's speakers (the Cupra stage, it's called now) echo. The first experience is therefore purely sensory, sensual, epidermal. Like when spring arrives.
Few queues, the second Weekend. Everything goes smoothly. At the entrance there is a stall about diversity, "nobody is normal", with an extensive list of phrases displayed such as "sexual freedom", "we are the queers", "we are the weirdos", "diverse community", etc., all of them in a single, solid and not very diverse language. The normal language, I suppose, at a festival as Barcelonian as it is international. The second stop I notice is the one with the bikes that make juices by pedaling, which would have served me to remember some grotesque touches of the Fòrum de les Cultures if it weren't for the fact that at that time the bikes were already stored. And then a FNAC stand, oh, here I really feel out of place. It had been a long time since I had seen the FNAC logo, immediately we are in the nineties and I wonder what they sell: basically, vinyls. And accessories, like straw hats or polaroids. It was like seeing one of those animated photos of the dead, who smile at you reluctantly but as if saying that they are still here.
Afterwards we ordered the first Estrella, today I'm not going to make the unfunny joke of ordering a Heineken, instead I order the Estrella and for the first time I notice the neighbors at the bar: they are about twenty-five years old and all have glitter on their faces. Fun, I think. How funny, you. Without yet imagining that, in here, this is the new normal. We cross the longed-for Haima (now an "urban forest") and the corridors where human currents alternate (now, this wave of people, what concert are they coming from? Are they really not interested in The Strokes at all?) and that's where I notice the changes that Primavera fashions have made: yes, the fauna has changed a lot. First because we have grown older, that's all that was missing, but above all because here nobody is normal. Nobody practically means nobody, the usual (and it's no exaggeration) is to wear glitter or mascara on the face. Boys and girls. And everything else. I don't think it was a festival claim, I think the world is like this and that now the Eurovision aesthetic prevails when it comes to partying. Total normalization of the hybrid aesthetic, and the queer, and the faggot, and above all of fantasy. Primavera today is an explosion of aesthetic freedom that reminds me a lot of the seventies, a kind of Woodstock filtered through the cosmetic psychedelia of Abba, the groupies of Euphoria and the balls of Conchita Wurst. I would almost say that the hetero world puts glitter on its cheeks or forehead so that it is not said that it lacks imagination. Because they don't tell us, but they think it, of that I have no doubt. Just look at the t-shirts we wear.
Then is when I consider the sign understandable, which we find as soon as we enter the large esplanade. In this second Weekend, Guardiola plays with Mourinho, after Weekend 1 where Colau was eating steak with Díaz Ayuso. It's well thought out, has artistic sense, and aligns both with the open spirit of the festival and with the idea of bringing it to Madrid. Next to it, the formula: "Barcelona + Madrid = Primavera". I don't know if they've calculated it well. And I don't think it has to do with my age, much less with any scandal over a homosexual kiss (they weren't looking for the scandal there, I hope), but indeed with putting too many new ingredients into a formula that worked: it's as if we suddenly put orange juice in Coca-Cola, or as if we wanted to link communism with freedom, if the freedom that interests us is really that of Las Vegas (which I don't think it is). Madrid? Seriously? Do you mean the formula will equal Primavera? And I also can't help but say that, in political terms and if we put ourselves in the shoes of what Catalans have experienced in recent years, seeing these two cities kissing evokes for many of us an image of a forced kiss, of abuse of power, of extraction, and of a relationship that is not free and consented. Be careful with this: the first song the Strokes play is precisely called Bad Decisions.
The formula: "Barcelona + Madrid = Primavera". I don't know if they've calculated it well.Estrella Stage. Before that, I must highlight the great success of the Red Bull Organics stand, which I don't have time for but really want to try. And a change: where a few years ago was "Created in Barcelona," which is now on the left, there is now a Cupra logo and slogan. Between these two signs, the concert unfolds, again abundant with glitter and good vibes, under the lights of the buildings of the Diagonal Mar neighbors who have complained rather little, mayor. I don't see the problem with fighting for Primavera to the death, mayor. Seriously, I don't see it. But anyway, let's go back to the concert, where we must forgive Julian Casablancas' life as he forgives ours with this dark aesthetic, too dark, with black gloves and a camouflage jacket, too much like a hungover teenager or a zombie allergic to light, for a group that brings the scratches of rock so close to the sparks of pop. The Strokes are basically good ideas, a group of overflowing ideas sometimes all put into a single song, such an brutal display of imagination that it's logical they end up moving away from the corsets of rock.También es una voz, la de él, a menudo medio metálica medio robótica, siempre apática y grave, hoy afectada por las secuelas de la covid (si es cierto que, como confiesa, fue él quien falló la semana pasada) e incapaz de hacer los fragmentos de falsete que son tan imprescincibles en Selfless, the third song (after Hard to Explain). When I say incapable I mean ridiculously incapable, conspicuously incapable, I mean people laughed. But those of us wearing dark glasses lie on the ground to hide and, after all, we are above all this.
"And I was told I would be speaking to my Catalan people", he says, winking at our minority behind his Matrix or Terminator lenses. He says it after referring to the internationality of the festival, which is true, glitter sticks to faces of all races and cultures: none of them completely normal, of course, but we can be proud that the least normal cultures are like ours. Julian knows this well, due to his family origins, with his grandparents involved in the textile world and having fled to the United States as a result of the Civil War. He even insists on emphasizing that it should be called "Barcelona", that is "BarSelona", as it would be said if it were an English city only in this case it is Catalan: he explains it to us like this and adds "Catalonia, embrace your existence". And I, out of the corner of my eye, remember the adulterous kisses of Colau and Guardiola.
He even insists on emphasizing that it should be called "Barcelona", that is "BarSelona", as it would be said if it were an English city only in this case it is Catalan:A pause for another Heineken, I mean an Estrella, and then they know how to make it impossible for us not to start dancing withSomedayIrresistible, well-executed, penetrating, precise, hard pop.Reptiliais again a good idea, like the thousand ideas that come out of them from trying so much with the infinite possibilities of the strings until they arrive, like so many other intelligent groups, to flirt with electronics. A single encore, because we have already said that he will spare our lives and everyone goes home.Well, I confess that we have previously been able to see Lorde (Rigoberta did not awaken enough consensus), so we will not be long in leaving.Perhaps we should peek into the Night Pro, after parading like a flock towards the Haima and now thinking what to do. More mascara, also latex, multicolored clothes. Move aside, the star is coming, I seem to say, with my imaginary sunglasses piercing through the night.Nobody is normal, here. I can go as whatever I want, diverse community. I can even dress up as a Primavera veteran, Strokes lover, straight, with a boring t-shirt andCreated in Barcelona. And stay so wide.
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