“We were waiting for you. And we want to wait for you many more years”. “Welcome to the Community of Madrid”. “You are going to want to be in Madrid in 2024, 2025, 2026 and all subsequent years.” The expressions of joy that, after ten months of negotiations, embroidered the debut of Primavera Sound in Madrid in October symbolized for many the decline of Barcelona and the passing of the baton to the thriving capital of Spain also at festivals. But for now the words of Mark Twain resonate when he wrote to a newspaper that the news of his death seemed highly exaggerated.
The Primavera Sound idyll with Madrid has ended in heartbreak. And that last month in the balance of its eventful landing in Arganda del Rey –first day cancelled, second with little influx and people getting out of cars in the middle of endless traffic jams and walking cross-country, and third already with the appearance of a great festival–, the organizers assured that the will was to “continue in Madrid, we believe in Madrid and in the people of Madrid, from next week we will work for 2024”. Of course, they left the door open to leave distant Arganda.
In the romance they all put the best they had, the Community of Madrid 850,000 euros for the promotion and Primavera their organizational skills and their groups, including Depeche Mode, Díaz Ayuso’s favorites, for which he has a rose tattooed. But what they did not have, although it seemed so at the time, as Alfonso Lanza, the festival’s director, said, was “the ideal venue, unique in Europe, designed for festivals”. Perhaps without the persistent rain that caused a thousand problems, everything would have been different. Perhaps the car parks disabled by the mud would have solved the circulatory chaos. Undoubtedly, today the story could have been different.
But what the departure of Primavera de Madrid indicates is that this story could repeat itself and they do not want any more risks. And that today there is no space without them in Madrid for its 12 stages. The MadCool festival, which has eight, is going for its third location. It may not be the last. It went from La Caja Mágica to some land in Valdebebas destined for the expansion of Ifema where there was no shortage of mobility problems and complaints from neighbors. And it landed this July in a large venue in the Villaverde district, to the north of Getafe, which was supposed to solve the problems but has repeated the play, to the point that the City Council has denied the license to the Reggaeton Beach Festival that was to be held there today. In the end it will turn out that the Fòrum 2004 has indeed left an important legacy.
