Sónar and Primavera Sound: music and destruction

In an article published in The Vanguard It was claimed that the Sónar boycott is harmless because the pro-Israeli investment fund that owns the supergroup that brings the festival together only invests a small portion of its vast wealth in music. That is: only invested 1.3 billion of its 582 billion euros in the purchase of Superstruct, the current owner of the festival. rich will be rich"These financial giants are soulless and immune to criticism," he argued. The article's conclusion was shocking: it quoted a supposed friend who was a fan of the techno who, despite feeling bad about all this genocide, will attend anyway, with "melancholic resignation." As if to say: to contradict oneself is human.

It happens that we live installed in the logic of "nothing happens", in the era of contradiction converted into aesthetics, trivialized, even from the apparently most progressive positions: the reactionary story that maintains that small feats are in vain and that pointing out some flagrant contradictions is too much wins. woke, as if revealing them meant becoming a kind of moral police force, or as if being critical were simply about asserting one's own superiority. But that's not the case.

Next, I read a very interesting article by Olga Rodríguez in Eldiario.es where I listed the actions that European countries could take but aren't taking to stop the genocide in Palestine. But if I'm not a head of government, nor a judge at The Hague Tribunal, nor Greta Thunberg aboard the Flotilla, there are still things within my reach, as the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement explains. One of them is not going to Sónar, something that doesn't make me a savior, but it does affirm a gesture that uses a space of visibility to say that things could be different. And it's not an empty gesture. of purely cosmetic activism, or any condemnation of the cultural sector: it's an attempt to alter the ideological framework through which we perceive reality through collective action. A gesture, call it useless, that seeks to unmask something that is presented as obvious. What if we stopped normalizing the existence of funds from investors complicit in genocide setting our cultural and leisure agenda?

From festival to festival, this edition of Primavera Sound went unnoticed with the Sónar controversy. No one accused him of being part of any major pro-Israeli Zionist group. Saved by the bell: this year you could attend without guilt, as if it weren't yet another monopoly denying alternative models for the city we live in. If you wanted, before going to dance and sing, you could walk through a frivolous immersive installation that transported you to the terror of Gaza: a surreal form of whitewashing the festival. I went to Primavera Sound in 2022 for the first time, and I went again in 2024, taking advantage of an invitation to see a concert. I promised myself then that I wouldn't go back. I'm not better than anyone else, obviously. I'm sure I'm as miserable and antithetical as many of the people who come. I know for a fact that my moral limits are the contradictions of someone else. And that my contradictions will be the moral limits of someone reading this now.

However, I wondered what those who host podcasts about gentrification, journalists who lead programs with editorials against mass tourism, were doing at the festival. influencers who criticize those who, as Marco de Eramo recently explained in a interview With Jordi Nopca, they're bringing the city to hell. I've thought that perhaps they need to record themselves saying these things for the same reason we need to hear them: to cleanse ourselves of guilt. To shake off the bad feeling and think that yes, ideally we want a free Palestine, and that when the time comes, we'll share the poster for the Renters' Union demonstration, but that, in the meantime, there are actions that don't speak for us: a sedative contradiction, like a promise, frees us. But from what does it free us?

God forbid I compare Palestine and Barcelona. What I'm actually comparing are Sónar and Primavera (sorry, Sónar's independent and experimental seed: we can't continue living off emotional gains). In one, the world we want is symbolically at stake: whether economic power and geopolitical forces should dominate all our daily decisions. That is, whether we consider €1.3 billion a small sum for an investment fund or whether a life in Palestine is worth more than any economic figure. In the other, the city we want is symbolically at stake: whether the photo on Instagram, the brilliant experience, or the superstar of the moment can mortgage the future of a city that many of us want to be different. Meanwhile, some contradiction frees us: with "melancholic resignation," we decide not to act. Or to act against our interests.