And suddenly, when they least expect it, a bucket of pixum falls on them. It's the height of the night; the alcohol has completely uninhibited them. But suddenly, they're soaked and smell bad. The shouting and chanting they've been doing in the middle of the night in the middle of the street has astonished the neighbors, and the response makes one of them lose his temper: he breaks down the door of the building and goes upstairs to look for the culprits. He can't find the apartment in question, and his friends—those who haven't been splashed with urine—talk him into reason. He leaves the building he's vandalized and continues the party, for this is Barcelona and the night is young.

Tickets are over in the blink of an eye. To get to everything, we are forced to plan months in advance so as not to miss that show, that live artist or that meal at a Michelin-starred restaurant. The wait increases if we want to go to a concert or festival, sometimes up to two years. But do we get tired of carrying a QR code on our mobile phone to access a leisure space, or are we moving hopelessly towards a horizon where improvisation is impossible?

The disappearance of the Opium nightclub on Barcelona's seafront will not be as quick as announced this July, when the City Council presented an agreement sealed with the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) to make it possible for the premises to be used to expand the facilities of the Mediterranean Centre for Marine and Environmental Research (CMIMA) in the city. Although the plan was to immediately hand over the provisional use of the space while the project and the tender for the works progressed, they will now not be able to start before September next year. The State government, which is the owner of these premises on the seafront, has extended Opium's lease for another year, as confirmed by the owners of the nightclub, who had already announced that they planned to challenge the agreement in court. They considered that the decision was "unilateral" and "purely ideological" to "punish" nightlife venues in the area. They now know the business will be allowed to continue at least for another year.

Catalan police have confirmed six cases in Catalonia of girls who claim to have received injections while dancing in a club. The first precedent was detected last July 10 in Lloret de Mar, when an 18-year-old reported she had noticed a jab in her arm on the dance floor of St. Trop' nightclub. The victim explained to ARA that she felt a sting in the area she was jabbed, as well as general discomfort, and her arm was completely numb for over two hours.

Barcelona is a noisy city. Too noisy. This is undoubtedly, along with pollution and dirtiness, one of its most obvious weaknesses. It is so because of the density, the still very intense traffic and the lack of green areas and public spaces. The policies to make more areas pedestrian friendly seek to correct this problem, which is particularly marked in central neighbourhoods, especially in the Eixample, but not only. The reduction in traffic is therefore essential. We must continue to move towards minimising the use of private cars, promoting alternative silent transport and improving public transport (which on the surface should be increasingly electric). The Eixample project which is now being rolled out follows these lines.

A member of a Telegram group with more than 2,400 people, in which calls for street drinking parties have been made in recent weeks, sends the following message: "We make covid certificates with two vaccines. Write me for more information". Another user replies that it is easier to get vaccinated, but he questions if he knows what they put in the doses and assures him that they carry "a lot of s*it". In a conversation with another, he dares to say that vaccines are free because they kill. "Wash your eyes, my friend", he adds. The denialist discourse of the covid passport forger apparently doesn't quite capture the attention of the group's members, but if we send him a private message, he explains that he can make a certificate for 550 euros.

"We hadn't gone out a single Thursday since we started uni!" Judit, Laia, Tània and Yema are 19 years old, they are from Berga and they have been sharing a flat for two years. But it's the first time they've been able to go out partying in Barcelona because clubs have been closed for a year and half – they've only opened for a couple of few weeks in summer. That's why the girls didn't want to miss the reopening of nightlife: "We were really looking forward to it". The first night could be felt in some clubs in Barcelona, which filled up and saw large queues outside. Everybody had to show their ID and their covid pass to get in, which meant the queues were slow.

Clubbing is back. With epidemiological data receding, the last sector to be given permission to reopen will be allowed to do so on October 8. This has been confirmed by sources of the Catalan Government to ACN, two weeks after nightclubs' outdoor areas were given permission to open until 3 am with no dancing. The measure comes after great pressure from the sector and images of large illegal outdoor parties over the past few weekends, in which thousands of people took part.

The Catalan Government has proposed reopening nightclubs withing days, with revellers having to present the covid pass to access premises. According to RAC1, the measure would come into force on October 8, but the Government claims "the date is not definite". According to government spokeswoman Patrícia Plaja, the administration is considering the reopening of clubs "in the upcoming weeks" with compulsory "use of the covid pass", a measure that will have to be endorsed by Catalonia's High Court. Last week the Generalitat announced a partial opening of nightlife: only in outdoor spaces until 3.00 am and without dancing. "Today we are closer than last week to the reopening," Plaja said, who on several occasions clarified that the specific date has not been decided "due to legal and health issues".

Last Friday's illegal party that brought together 9,000 young people at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) has set off all the alarm bells, but it is just one of the many meetings that young people from all over the country organise every weekend and which have become a public order problem, as well as a possible source of contagion. The Catalan Minister of Home Affairs, Joan Ignasi Elena, has said he suspects that these open-air parties are not spontaneous but are organised by people who want to make money from the fact that bars and clubs are still closed, which is very likely.

Around 8,000 people have concentrated this Friday night and during the early hours of Saturday morning in a street drinking party on the campus of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, in Cerdanyola del Vallès. The call ran through social networks and spoke of a party at the Faculty of Engineering, but when the young people arrived they saw that there was no music or DJ's and that the party did not exist. Even so, they have celebrated a party with music and alcohol that has lasted until the early hours of the morning.

There will be no date for the opening of night clubs until Catalan ICUs empty out. This is the answer that the Catalan Minister of Health, Josep Maria Argimon, has given to the representatives of sector companies in the new meeting held yesterday afternoon has ended without the answer nightclubs and late night bars have been seeking for months. The department will only allow the reopening of premises when there is a positive evolution of hospital admissions and, although he has not committed to any specific threshold, the Argimon has pointed out that 100 ICU admissions would be "good data", as explained by the secretary general of Fecasarm, Joaquim Boadas.

The data on the evolution of the covid is not good and those of Barcelona are of particular concern: in the last week, infections multiplied by four in the city and reached 8,915. More than a thousand positive cases per day, when only three weeks ago there were about 150. "The number of infections has risen a lot in a few days", the Councilor for Health, Gemma Tarafa, has warned at a press conference, who, as she did in the hardest moments of the pandemic, has appeared accompanied by the Deputy Mayor for Security, Albert Batlle, and the councilor Eloi Badia, who is in charge of managing the beaches, one of the most concerning parts of the city with regards to night crowds. With nightlife closed, the Colau government today focused its message on the need to avoid crowds in public spaces and specifically in the beach area, although it has ruled out closing them so as not to concentrate more people in other spaces.

The Department of Health has convened a meeting with the nightlife sector this Tuesday at noon following the surge in cases among young people. The Government is preparing a new resolution that implies the closing of the nightlife premises, although outdoor dancefloors will still be allowed-. "There is no alternative if we want to bring the virus back under control", warned the spokeswoman for the Catalan Government, Patricia Plaja. The executive has met to address new measures to try to stop the exponential growth of contagions and has decided to re-close the nightlife 15 days after its opening.

The nightlife sector does not want to pay the price for the increase of covid infections that affects the youngest the most. For that reason, some nightclubs, after finding that with the current measures it is "impossible" to guarantee that they are "safe" leisure spaces, have opted to close. This is what the two Arena group clubs have done, which in a statement lamented this "impossibility" to stay protected as a safe space if no new measures such as limiting entry to whoever has a negative antigen test or until the vaccination campaign is not more advanced.

Bars and nightclubs will be open for Sant Joan. The Government and the sector have agreed on the reopening of nightlife fifteen months after its closure due to the pandemic. With the final touches yet to be agreed, activity is expected to resume from Monday 21 June. Clubs will be allowed to open until 3 am -and then they will have an extra half hour for clients to vacate the building- and bars will be allowed to extend their activity another half hour, until half past three in the morning.

The Department of Health will meet this Friday with the nightlife industry to agree on the measures for reopening, which, predictably, will be "in a few weeks", according to the Secretary of Public Health, Carmen Cabezas. Although she has avoided talking about dates, she has indicated that a favourable reopening for everyone is being sought, also taking into account the "economic recovery" of a sector that has been closed for months due to the spread of covid. In any case, she insisted, it will remain linked to the evolution of the epidemiological situation. The main question now is whether clubs and bars will open for the festival of Sant Joan on June 23 or whether the great reopening will be postponed another couple of weeks.

The clash between the Spanish Ministry of Health and regions over the agreement on opening times and maximum capacity for the hospitality industry is growing. Both Madrid and the Basque Country advanced in the morning that they would not apply it and they were joined shortly afterwards by the Balearic Islands, governed by the Socialists. The Islands' government had not positioned itself against the measures in the Interterritorial Health Council meeting held on Wednesday. This opens a clash of legitimacy on the role of the Interterritorial Health Council: the Spanish government argues that the decisions taken, even if they are not unanimous, must be binding, while communities claim that it is their competence to regulate on opening times for different premises. The Ministry of Health, however, has opened the door to allowing each community to do what it deems appropriate. In statements to RNE, the minister has defended the measures to "reduce cumulative incidence", but at the same time has avoided raising the prospect of a court case if the regions do not implement the agreement.

A new upsurge in contagions would be a bad sign, both in terms of the real effects (albeit limited, given that the most at-risk groups are those that are beginning to be vaccinated) and in terms of the psychological and economic effects. If we were to suddenly take a collective step backwards and the health indicators were to rise again, it could easily send a message to the international community that Catalonia and Spain are no longer safe, with the effect this could have on tourism. The optimistic message, even too optimistic, that the Spanish president, Pedro Sánchez, launched this Monday according to which we will have achieved herd immunity by August has a lot to do with the desire to give an international image of security. And this is understandable: in the short term, the return of tourism is an important factor in easing our way out of the crisis. But this message could be turned on its head if the reality of the health situation does not match it in the coming weeks. Because in the next few key weeks vaccination will have to be prioritised over an excessively speedy de-escalation, as nightlife businesses - among others - are seeking, after having been forced to stay shut since last July.

Nightlife business association Fecasarm has proposed a pilot test with antigen test for the reopening of nightclubs, according to the programme Planta baixa on TV3. The purpose is to distribute 4,000 people in 10 nightclubs in Barcelona on Friday May 21. As in the concert of Love of Lesbian at the Palau Sant Jordi, the public will have to take an antigen test on the same day of the pilot test. Once in the club, which would open without time restrictions, everyone would wear a mask. In addition, the premises will have to ensure proper ventilation.