‘People Will Be Safer Inside The Venue Than Outside’: Q’s With The Promoters Of Spain’s Next Test Concert

The audience will be split in three groups across three sectors, each facilitating toilets and food and beverage offerings. A negative antigen test taken on the same needs to be shown at the entrance, where people will also have their temperature taken. Masks are mandatory on site. 

Pollstar spoke to Jordi Herreruela and Marc Tapias, festival director and chief comms officer, respectively, at Cruïlla Festival, one of Spain’s major summer events. The Cruïlla team was instrumental in organizing this latest test event, and both Herreruela and Tapias are confident that the results will help open the country’s events back up – maybe even this coming summer.

Jordi Herreruela: It’s restricted. If you know a bit about Spain, it’s a country made up of different regions. Since Monday [March 15] we can move outside our city but not outside of Catalonia. Restaurants and bars are open from midday, but aren’t allowed to open at night. It is the first week that amateur sports can play, and it’s the first week that I can visit my parents again.

Marc Tapias: We have a curfew that starts at 11 p.m. at night, hence bars and restaurant will be open all day long. The numbers seems to be going in a good direction, things are starting to reopen, we’re starting to regain something close to normal life.

Jordi Herreruela: Nothing. There are shows taking place in theaters or in spaces where people can be seated at a security distance.

Jordi Herreruela: Only as a financial partner, not in the organization. Still, we are working in the same direction, with different teams of scientists. Since Primavera announced their plans for test events, we began to work together. We’re both [banking on] antigen tests, and we’re bundling our efforts for this second step.

Jordi Herreruela: Yeah, let me recap: I’ve been working on this test event since April 2020. When COVID arrived and the shutdowns commenced, I began to contact the different Spanish governments, the City of Barcelona, the government of Catalonia as well as the federal government, offering our collaboration as festivals. After all, we are experts on access control. We got great technologies, including wristbands with a chip, allowing for all sorts of control, not just at festivals, but for the reopening of society as a whole. 

By May 2020, after many talks with scientists, including the ones working at Barcelona’s supercomputing center, I began to understand that the tests we had at the time were not accurate enough, at least not for massification. 4% to 6% of results were false negatives. When you bring together 50,000 people at that level of inaccuracy, the system fails. So, we had to accept that festivals were not going to be possible that summer, nor would there be any kind of health passport.

By September, new antigen tests had become available. They still make mistakes when determining who’s got the virus, but they don’t make mistakes when identifying who can transmit the virus. Some people can have the virus, but they might not be able to transmit it. With a PCR test, you can cover the whole range, with antigen tests there are some mistakes, but only in those cases where viral load is so low that it cannot be transmitted. 

This new test allowed us to create a health bubble, in which we can be sure that nobody inside can transfer the virus. What Primavera the scientists they worked with found during the test event in December, is that people with a positive PCR and a negative antigen test were not transferring the virus. That’s an amazing demonstration. The same scientists have also been working with sports collectives and schools throughout last summer. They’re sure we can continue working with these health bubbles. 

And that’s exactly what we’re going to do on March 27: we’re going to create a health bubble, where everyone that comes inside the venue – crew, artists, security, press politicians, audience – has to have a negative antigens test result obtained during the same day. All will bring masks, but we will be able to avoid distancing. It will be first time outside of Australia and New Zealand that people get to enjoy a live show, a music show, while dancing and jumping around more or less as we used to.

Jordi Herreruela: This test is done in close collaboration with the government. This time, we are going to link our audience database with the public health data system until 14 days after the show to detect if anyone that has been inside the venue tested positive [in the days after].

Marc Tapias: The scientists supporting this event said an important thing, which is that people will be safer inside the venue than outside, especially because the venue has great ventilation. That’s a key thing to understand, [and the reason we’re] sure that this is a secure way to go. 

Jordi Herreruela: And this is the first time the government’s health department is involved on the organization.

Jordi Herreruela: 18,000, including seats, but on the on the main drill field the maximum is 5,000. We’re not going to have people seated, but we are gonna have the maximum capacity on the field. 

Jordi Herreruela: As we still cannot sell the seated tickets, there is no possibility for a financial profit on this show, also because the test and the masks are included [in the ticket price], and all the scientists working on it [have to be paid as well]. We’re not promoting this show as a financial operation, it is a test. All the festivals in Barcelona haven’t been working together to realize a 5,000 show for fun, but in order to find a way to come back.

Marc Tapias: It’s one of the first steps to be able to do Cruïlla Festival in summer. This is the first time a lot of people will gather in a venue without distancing. 

Jordi Herreruela: One of the main pains, we’ll probably have to fight against, is what the people that are not going to the show think. We have to convey to them that it is possible to work with health bubbles, and that it’s even safer than anything else you’re doing throughout your day. As this is the first experience, it is quite difficult to explain to the people, who aren’t allowed to work, fly or travel, that this is safer than anything they could be doing. We’re trying to change the way people think about what is safe and what is unsafe step by step. 

It’s not what we want to believe, it is what the scientists tell us, what the health department of government tells us.

Marc Tapias: They trust us. There’s a lot of people, who, prior to having bought the ticket, went to our website. They could see all the people involved in this. It is most important for the cultural industries to regain the trust of the people when they’re buying in a ticket.

Jordi Herreruela: We have demonstrated that the music industry is so professional, so technical, right now. After the attack on La Rambla [in 2017], all the festivals in Barcelona began to develop terrorism protocols. We are a really professional and technical industry that can help a lot with creating ephemeral structures that help the government to find a way out of this crisis. We can create ephemeral structures to deliver vaccines, we can create access control systems, apps to determine who’s been vaccinated, who’s got a PCR or antigen test, ways to move without putting anyone else in danger. We are fighting for our industry, but we are one of the best partners the government can have in order to find a solution to this equation.

Jordi Herreruela: Right at the beginning of this process in May 2020, some of the scientists we’ve been working with told me, ‘the only way is to demonstrate security on your own, don’t wait until the administration gives you the chance.’ So, we began with seated shows, 200 people, distanced. We promoted a lot of those in Barcelona last summer. Even then, we demonstrated that we are not contributing to the spread of COVID. 

Then came the test of Primavera Sound at the Apollo in December with 500 people. It was the second step to demonstrate that we can do things safely. This is the third step, and, probably before summer, we need another step [involving] a festival [scenario]. Without these steps, the administration won’t follow up. We cannot wait for them to find a solution. We need to assure them that we are safe.

Jordi Herreruela: We are going to do Cruïlla Festival in summer, I’m quite sure of it. I still cannot explain the health protocol that will be in place, because it’s likely to change a lot in the coming months; the accuracy of tests is improving constantly, and there will be a lot of people already vaccinated. We’ll probably have to imagine some kind of mixed system. I’m quite sure we can create a health bubble in one way or another.

What I think will be necessary after this 5,000-people show, is another show, probably open-air, probably with more people, testing this mixed system, where we accept people that have been vaccinated as well as different kinds of tests. We already have an access system in place, but it’s probably not the final one. Still, I’m sure we will be able to do Cruïlla Festival. We are really confident, and it’s not just us who think that way, it’s the scientists and the government, as well.

Marc Tapias: This is not only about being able to do a concert in Barcelona without social distancing. What’s important also is the fact that we have a government and scientists, who understand that the live industry can help a lot – not only to do concerts, but to improve people’s daily lives in any city.

Jordi says it all the time: we build temporary cities for two to seven days for hundreds of thousands of people. Here, in Barcelona, the government has understood that we have so much to give to society. 

Jordi Herreruela: Barcelona boasts one of the most powerful music industries outside of England and America, what with three major festivals, Primavera Sound, Sonar and Cruïlla. With all of these teams working together, we have created a strong group that can open doors.