Unprecedented milestone: Oques Grasses will fill the Olympic Stadium four times

BarcelonaIt's official: Oques Grasses will make Catalan music history by bringing together 220,000 people for four concerts on October 5, 7, 9, and 10, 2026, at the Estadi Olímpic Lluís Companys. Tickets for the two concerts added to the lineup on Friday sold out in just one hour this Monday. The first announced concert, which will be the final one after ten years together, was a huge success. sold out The first show took 21 minutes. The second, 19 minutes.

Oques Grasses is the first band to perform in Catalonia's largest concert venue (not a festival venue) singing in Catalan. With four consecutive concerts, they have also far surpassed the attendance figures of legendary concerts like Lluís Llach's at Camp Nou on July 6, 1985, which drew 100,000 people, and far exceeded other foundational events such as the Catalan rock concert at the Palau Sant Jordi on June 14, 2011, Sangtraït, which attracted 21,104 spectators. Sopa de Cabra themselves drew 50,000 people across their three concerts at the Palau Sant Jordi in 2011.

Yes, there are Catalan bands that have filled an Olympic Stadium, such as Estopa, Aitana, and El Último de la Fila, who will do two shows. However, two (or more) Olympic Stadiums have so far only been filled by international artists like Bruce Springsteen, and Bad Bunny will do so. And only Coldplay has filled four.

From the Palau Sant Jordi to the Olympic Stadium

"We have strived to offer a concert worthy of the Palau Sant Jordi," said the leader of Oques Grasses, Josep Montero, A few days before the performance on January 28, 2023, at the large indoor arena in Montjuïc. It wasn't easy to gather the 18,400 people who filled the Palau Sant JordiBut selling out confirmed that the group from Osona could play to crowds outside the confines of festivals and local celebrations. In other words, Oques Grasses did sell tickets. Therefore, they could also negotiate higher fees with festivals and city councils. When the group put together the tour for the album Fruit of delirium (2024), they were able to better select where, when, and for how much money to play. A frantic race then began to have the group headlining shows across the country. A frenzy the group took with serenity, bolstered by their previous success.

That milestone performance by Oques Grasses at the Palau Sant Jordi was celebrated, just as the concerts of Goat Soup, Zoo and Antonia Font in the same space. And how it was later celebrated that Juan Dausá also fill the Palau Sant Jordi and that theElectric Dharma could hold the 50th anniversary celebration. All of this, besides providing a boost of cultural self-esteem, demonstrated what was often difficult to imagine as a possibility, surely due to a mixture of prudence and an inferiority complex. It's true that filling the Palau Sant Jordi with people singing in Catalan didn't seem easy, but it could be done, especially if the tickets were affordable (25 euros was the price of that Oques Grasses concert; and between 35 and 60 euros for both shows at the Olímpic, when the average price for large-scale concerts often approaches 100 euros). The audience is there: just recall the crowds that gather every year for the free concerts on Bogatell beach in Barcelona during the Mercè festival, where groups like Manel, Txarango, Els Catarres, Ginestà, Zoo, Figa Flawas, and Oques Grasses themselves have performed, sometimes in front of 60,000 spectators. Or the 25,000 people who sell out tickets to Canet Rock year after year. Or the success of Cabró Rock. Or that The Acoustics of Figueres decided to create a scenario so that Josep Montero's band could play for 20,000 spectators.

Now, filling four Olympic Stadiums is a huge leap, and for now, it would be difficult to find another group that, singing in Catalan, draws 220,000. What made it possible? Obviously, Oques Grasses, a band that emerged from the mestizo festival scene spearheaded by Txarango, but which, consciously or unconsciously, knew how to anticipate its exhaustion, or simply knew how to read the present guided by intuition. The turning point was Sun fans (2019), the song's album In the nightSuddenly, Oques Grasses broadened their rhythmic range, tuning in to hedonistic electronica (like that of Daft Punk, for example) and dancing to Latin patterns. The public embraced the new sound, and many bands began to take note of the production and mixing style of Montero and keyboardist Joan Borràs, a musician trained at Esmuc, as were two other members of Oques Grasses: trumpeter Miquel Rojo and saxophonist Josep Valldeneu.In the night "It opened us up to something new," Montero said.

The same in 2021 Montero explained that C Tangana had "impacted" them so much that it showed on the album that they published that year Living life to the fullest. They were tuning in to Radio Presente and connecting with two worlds at once: the one that came from cultural fusion and the one that supported the younger generation of urban music. And they reached a third world: children, as parents with children between five and ten years old can attest. Living life to the fullest He took them to the Palau Sant Jordi and gave them the confidence to build the album Fruit of delirium As they pleased.

Filling four Olympic Stadiums is also a consequence of an unrepeatable circumstance: the announcement of the band's dissolution; therefore, a horizon with an end date. Music critic Jordi Bianciotto spoke about this a few days ago on Rac1: what a shame that milestones like this occur when the group calls it quits.