The metal festival, a stronghold on a European scale, is studying new locations to save this summer’s edition, given that the park’s reform works make it extremely difficult to fit in. As a backdrop, the rejection generated by the sample to a platform of neighbors, perhaps a sensitive point in this election year.
Heavy metal is not violence, as that motto of the 80s said, but it is still sometimes difficult to enjoy a peaceful civil life. There is the Barcelona Rock Fest, a major event in the industry on a European scale, whose 2023 edition, instead of enjoying the longed-for post-covid 19 normality, must face new and creative obstacles.
We have the reform of the Can Zam park, complicating the 8th Rock Fest, to be held from June 29 to July 1. This wooded area is part of the festival’s identity, but It will be very difficult for it to be operational this summer and the exhibition has been studying for some time, now against the clock, other possible scenarios (for the entire metropolitan area). And, as a backdrop, the protests of the Platform in Defense of the Serra Marina i Can Zam, contrary to the dance of watts of the sons of metal.
The ‘heavy’ clientele is getting impatient while the festival works to make its 2023 edition a reality, in one place or another, and is negotiating with headliners at a time when the other competition events (Resurrection Fest, Leyendas del Rock, Rock Imperium) already have their programs closed. But Rock Fest is an expert in setbacks and ‘in extremis’ solutions.
It is difficult to elucidate if the certain neighborhood aversion (of uncertain quantification) may have stimulated the consistorial prudence before the imminence of 28-M. The arguments against Rock Fest are, in any case, refutable. The Platform is suspicious of the ‘polivalent Clariana’ planned for the new park, a harbinger of rock activity. The so-called ‘clariana’ reminds me of many other venues in urban parks, open in summer to all kinds of concerts: in Hyde Park, London, where this year the rather raucous Guns n’Roses will be performing, at a distance from the houses (and hotels) in Mayfair similar to that observed in Can Zam with respect to the closest buildings, between one hundred and two hundred meters. In the UK they know that rock represents not only a cultural fact, but a significant part of GDP. It is true that in Hyde Park the performances do not finish as late as in Can Zam, but Rock Fest only lasts three days.
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Of course, having a ‘heavy’ festival in front of your house can be annoying, but on the other side of the scale there are collective benefits of various kinds, including the screening of Santa Coloma. Although, whatever happens, Rock Fest knows that the day it announces its plans, it will be there. his natural, long-suffering and faithful metal audience by definition.
