More than 76,000 people have passed through the Cruïlla festival over the course of four days that ended this Saturday with a poster featuring local artists, such as Antònia Font, Leiva, Amaia or Stay Homas. A role played by those from here that is reflected in the audience, with whom a closeness that transcends music is vindicated to delve into the commitment to develop a sustainable festival.
“We have consolidated a dream”, Jordi Herreruela, director of the festival, said with satisfaction this Saturday, which he emphasized marks a new model for the sector, “in which friendliness, comfort and treatment of people is as much or more more important than the poster”. And these people are one of the characteristics that define the event, quintessentially Barcelona. 97% of the audience is Catalan, 61% from the city of Barcelona itself, while another 29% and 51% are repeaters, which helped the director to talk about “consolidation” of a brand with a poster similar to other events of the same type, but with a “different” atmosphere.
“We are targeting a local audience, and 80% of festival broadcasts have to do with public travel”, recently recalled the director of the festival, Jordi Herreruela, as a starting point to explain all the progress made in the matter of sustainability. At the outset, Cruïlla can boast of being the first major festival to be powered exclusively through the electricity grid, thereby consigning to the drawer of history the noisy generators, believed for decades of any musical performance that it was taken The measure will save the emission of 36 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere and yes, it has an economic cost, that of an intermediate artist on the poster.
Another type of saving that has been pursued is that of the inconvenience to the neighbors, for which the end of the sessions on Thursday and Friday was brought forward, and the stages were relocated in order to reduce the sound impact. Nothing could be done, on the contrary, with the problems caused by public transport. “Having it cut off is a big problem”, lamented Herreruela, who also missed a greater presence of taxis in the area.
More visible to the public have been the plastic cups, which break with the increasingly widespread custom of personalizing them in order to encourage their reuse in other events.
Many of these vessels were running yesterday to combat the hot day that began with Suu’s performance, pure energy that jumped electric guitar in hand on the Vueling stage with Boom. Under a sun of justice, the 23-year-old singer offered a concert that the keyboards marked in a cheerful and summery key with easy-to-digest pop songs such as the chant Tant de bo, No eres so especial, Creo (que tk) from her last album or the new Cheap postcard, dart to the posturing so in vogue at this time of the year.
At the same time, Dani Fernández offered her torn voice at the Oxfam Intermón and asked for applause from the audience as she sang her love and heartbreak accompanied by two rock guitars in Si tus piernas, Artificialo Solo quiero bailar, with which she made everything jump the public A concert that featured the voice of Juancho, Leiva’s brother, in Plan fatal.
With the hot audience it was time to take off in the galaxies of Antònia Font, who since their return have become accustomed to filling large stages like last night at Estrella Damm. Last night, with Un minut stroboscopica, they embarked on a new journey through cities, stars and deserts driven by the voice of Pau Debon, who enjoyed making the audience dance and rock out to Mecanismes. The Majorcans counted on the complicity of the local public that the Cruïlla boasts of, ready to sing “Things are not easy for anyone inside this igloo”, remember that “Because you are so unreal we love you all the same” or raise your voice in heart to say that “I am sure of one thing: I come with you”.
The concert flowed with pop rhythms, with sonic journeys such as that of Astronauta rimador, with the distorted guitar of Joan Miquel Oliver, or at the other end the intimate phrases of Ballet dancers or Perfect lovers, interpreted against a sidereal background. A repertoire that faced the final part with a party of hits that made the audience jump like Alpinistes -samurais, Wa yeah! or Calgary 88 to close with Viure sen tu, which once again confirmed Antònia Font’s success in returning to the stage.
Leiva took over amid the roar of his fans in an evening that still promised to be long, in which the performance of the British Placebo, Amaia Romero and the Stay Homas, among other artists, was scheduled to close the festival for good after 3 in the morning with the performance of Carlangas.
