Festivals without a date

After months of work, with funds al­ready in­vested and with thou­sands of jobs at stake, the pro­mot­ers of the main mu­si­cal sum­mer events are out­raged.

The Covid-19 re­stric­tions have put the sched­ule of an­nual sum­mer fes­ti­vals at risk and, for the mo­ment, it is still not known whether they can be held or under what con­di­tions.

It is the lack of clar­ity about the mea­sures im­posed by the Span­ish gov­ern­ment that have led some or­gan­is­ers to can­cel this year’s events. Such is the case of the Per­al­ada and Jardins de Pe­dralbes fes­ti­vals, Barcelona’s Polo Music Fes­ti­val, Rock­dest in Santa Coloma de Gramenet, Minipop in Tar­rag­ona, the Fresc Fes­ti­val in Sabadell and the No Sur­ren­der fes­ti­val in Mollerussa, to name a few.

Tito Ra­moneda, founder and di­rec­tor of The Pro­ject, which or­gan­ises such promi­nent fes­ti­vals as Porta Fer­rada in Sant Feliu de Guíxols and the Barcelona In­ter­na­tional Jazz Fes­ti­val, and who is also vice pres­i­dent of the APM (As­so­ci­a­tion of Music Pro­mot­ers), crit­i­cises the Span­ish gov­ern­ment for not pro­vid­ing clear di­rec­tives and for not or­der­ing the can­cel­la­tions due to force ma­jeure.

“In this sec­tor, rather than know­ing when we can do things, we need to know until when we can’t do things. Other Eu­ro­pean coun­tries have al­ready been given dates, but here, not yet. The un­cer­tainty that we are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing is neg­a­tive,“ he says.

Ra­moneda ad­mits he is pes­simistic: “I se­ri­ously doubt we’ll be al­lowed to do any­thing. Maybe some very small-scale events with local artists, be­cause one thing that is very clear is that the in­ter­na­tional acts will not turn up.“ He is a lit­tle more op­ti­mistic about the au­tumn/win­ter pe­riod: “I trust the sec­tor can get started again in the last two months of the year,“ he says.

Yet, he also warns that this is far from ideal. “Cer­tain events are un­fea­si­ble with a re­duced ca­pac­ity,“ he says, adding that some sum­mer fes­ti­vals don’t make sense in win­ter: “A sum­mer fes­ti­val, which is done out­doors, is ab­solutely un­fea­si­ble in No­vem­ber or in De­cem­ber.“

In the case of the Porta Fer­rada Fes­ti­val, from July 10 to Au­gust 15, no de­ci­sion has yet been taken, but if it goes ahead it is likely the con­certs will take place in Au­gust only. “We hope that we can do the fes­ti­val this year, al­though right now it’s ab­solutely un­fea­si­ble to hold it under the same con­di­tions we planned for, but nor do we have any more news ei­ther,“ says Ra­moneda, who adds that they are study­ing var­i­ous al­ter­na­tives in con­junc­tion with the Sant Feliu de Guíxols town coun­cil, “which has the last word.“

Pro­mot­ers of other fes­ti­vals find them­selves in the same fix, such as Xavier Pas­cual, di­rec­tor of Promo Arts Music and man­ager of the Strenes and Acústica fes­ti­vals in Girona and Figueres. “Every day that goes by, every­thing changes, and every­thing we say now, by to­mor­row could al­ready be out of date,“ he says.

An ex­am­ple is the Strenes fes­ti­val, which was to have taken place from March 28 to May 3 but, due to the Covid-19 cri­sis, was resched­uled from June 26 to July 11, al­though even these dates are not sure. “Four weeks ago, we thought we could make it, but in 15 days our opin­ion has com­pletely changed, be­cause the input we’re get­ting from politi­cians, sci­en­tists, and our sec­tor are all neg­a­tive; every­thing sug­gests that we won’t be able to go back to nor­mal life, that there will be no more con­cen­tra­tions of peo­ple, that there will be a whole se­ries of mea­sures..., and that events like music fes­ti­vals will be the last in line,“ says Pas­cual, who also crit­i­cises a lack of “any pro­to­col to fol­low”.

An added prob­lem for most fes­ti­val or­gan­is­ers is that they can­not apply for the gov­ern­ment’s tem­po­rary re­dun­dancy scheme: “If the staff stop work­ing, who or­gan­ises the fes­ti­val? We have to main­tain the struc­ture, even if we’re work­ing for some­thing that we may end up never doing; those who are work­ing need to be paid. How do we do that?“ Pas­cual asks.

The or­gan­is­ers of the Jardins de Pe­dralbes fes­ti­val have al­ready made the de­ci­sion to can­cel this year’s edi­tion, which was to open on June 3 with a per­for­mance by Sara Baras. Martín Pérez, the di­rec­tor of the mu­si­cal event, says it in­volves the work of 700 peo­ple be­tween di­rect and in­di­rect staff, with a bud­get of about four mil­lion euros.

The same de­ci­sion was made by the man­agers of the Castell de Per­al­ada Fes­ti­val, who see hold­ing the 34th edi­tion, sched­uled for July 2 to Au­gust 15, as un­fea­si­ble. How­ever, they are look­ing into the pos­si­bil­ity of of­fer­ing some cul­tural con­tent, prefer­ably in stream­ing form, dur­ing this sum­mer.

Pro­mot­ers hope that after the pan­demic, they can go back to putting on large-scale con­certs. “I hope that in the fu­ture we can work on fes­ti­vals with the same for­mat as be­fore, be­cause a con­cert with so­cial dis­tanc­ing dis­pels the magic; it will not be the same for artists, ei­ther, hav­ing peo­ple scat­tered around the en­clo­sure, with­out the warmth of a full space,“ be­lieves Ra­moneda.

Music pro­mot­ers will have to adapt to safety mea­sures as well, al­though this does not frighten them, on the con­trary: “We can make going to a con­cert much safer than going to El Corte Inglès [de­part­ment store]. With dis­in­fec­tion tun­nels, with con­trols of all kinds... With the right tools, we can make our events the safest places, be­cause we are spe­cial­ists in this area,“ says Pas­cual.

Pro­mot­ers also claim that if they are fi­nally un­able to or­gan­ise fes­ti­vals, then the au­thor­i­ties should “pro­vide aid to sus­tain the struc­tures of the com­pa­nies that make fes­ti­vals pos­si­ble,” says Ra­moneda, who warns: ”If not, it’s quite likely that there won’t be any fes­ti­vals in 2021 ei­ther.”

The live music in­dus­try ac­counts for thou­sands of jobs and a great many euros are at stake. “The eco­nomic im­pact is very se­ri­ous. If there’s no help for this sec­tor that’s al­ready frag­ile, we could find that when con­certs are pos­si­ble again it has dis­ap­peared, out of star­va­tion. Help and pro­tec­tion mea­sures for the sec­tor are key,“ claims Pas­cual.

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