In front of one of the entrances to the Estadi OlÃmpic LluÃs Companys, a small camp of fans of English singer Harry Styles has formed. The artist will perform in Barcelona on Wednesday, July 12. There are five weeks left, but the queue seems to have started.
There are six girls who are around twenty years of age. Some have spent the night outdoors and now they are going to rest at home, others stay a few more hours with those who have just joined to do the afternoon shift. The luckiest are in camping chairs, the rest are sitting on the ground, all of them chatting in a circle, surrounded by blankets, mats and one-litre bottles of water.
Under the midday sun, only a small shady corner remains around the Estadi OlÃmpic, where the group of girls has settled. It is time to eat and some take out their lunch boxes from the large plastic bags, grouped on the floor, others seem to be waiting. In a matter of minutes, a food delivery man parks his motorcycle on the opposite sidewalk and approaches the group with two cardboard bags.
They know each other for the same reason that has led them to be here, the fanaticism shared by the singer. They have met at previous concerts, interact on Twitter, where the singer has dozens of fan pages, and are part of WhatsApp groups, from where they have organized this camp.
They don’t want to talk about camping, they want to avoid more trouble. Not all the fandom that will attend the concert agrees with this. But it is not just about these six girls, there are more than sixty young people who are part of it and have agreed to establish a total of seven rules for this camp, outside the official organization of the event. It is a self-organization with the aim of gaining the first rows of the track to see their idol up close.
The news of the camping and the leak of the pamphlet of regulations have caused criticism to explode on the networks. “It is very unfair that for 10 lifeless people, without having to go to study and without a job life who live in Barcelona, ​​people have to screw themselves and be behind everyone†complains a girl on Twitter. These measures state that roll call will be taken three times a day, at eight in the morning, four in the afternoon and ten at night, to check that at least one person from each group is guarding the site. As well as bracelets will be distributed one or two days before the concert to identify themselves in front of the rest of the queue. With these measures they intend to prevent those who have not been in the camp from getting to the first rows of the track.
“And especially TPWKâ€, that’s how this set of rules ends. These acronyms refer to the Styles song Treat People With Kindness, which is the singer’s motto.
After spending several days at the door of the Estadi OlÃmpic, the fans have been forced to move a few meters because tomorrow, Thursday, Beyoncé will star in a long-awaited concert at the Barcelona venue and until July 12 other recitals will be held on Montjuïc , especially in the Palau Sant Jordi.
However, they have not moved far: now they are waiting on the opposite sidewalk, a few meters from the entrance to the Old Gate of Marathon, where they were before.
This is not an isolated case in the artist’s concerts. In Madrid, this past summer some fans queued for four days to see the former leader of the boy band One Direction, with which he sold more than 70 million records. Later, in Argentina, where he performed in December, fans camped out at the gates of the Monumental stadium in Buenos Aires 150 days before the concert.
The 29-year-old singer was named “the most desired man” by Rolling Stone magazine last year. Mental health and sexual freedom are some of the values ​​that the artist proclaims and that have won him the hearts of millions of fans, becoming one of the most influential new pop icons around the world.
