"If you still have a voice when you get home, it means you haven't experienced Canet Rock the way you should have," says the festival's current director, Gemma Recoder. To mark the fiftieth anniversary of a musical event that in 1975 became a major countercultural celebration while Franco was still alive, the documentary is being released. Canet Rock: Before the sun risesDirected by Xavier Sanjuan and produced by Alrevés Productions and 3Cat, the documentary premiered on Monday at the Aribau Cinema and will be broadcast on TV3 this Tuesday. Non-Fiction and it can be viewed on the 3Cat platform.

It is the 50th anniversary of the birth of the flagship music festival of theUnderground and counterculture in Catalonia in the 1970s. This year, Canet Rock celebrates half a century since that first edition, which was held under Franco's dictatorship and without government permission.

Gemma Recoder –director of Canet Rock and the production company Sun Music, which organizes large charity concerts– has just been chosen by the magazine Forbes as one of the 100 most influential Catalans. Canet Rock is next Saturday: 25,000 people will watch the sunrise with a lineup of artists singing in Catalan such as Mushka, The Tyets, Julieta, Els Catarres, and Figa Flawas. Gemma Recoder had a previous life, where she was the one who went on stage to sing or recorded hundreds of songs for commercials. In April, she married Fede Sardà, her partner of thirty years. The secret: never go shopping together at the supermarket.

The three massive summer festivals held in early July, during the fifth wave caused by the delta variant, led to 76% more infections than the Health Department expected, and as many as double the cases expected in Vida Festival and Canet Rock. In total it is estimated that 2,279 people were infected, 842 cases more than expected in the 14 days after the festivals, out of a total of 49,570 attendees. It has also been identified that 271 people entered the festivals after testing positive. Instead of quarantining, they continued towards the venue and hoped they wouldn't be stopped - and weren't.

Yes, the audience of Oques Grasses received the sun on Sunday at Canet Rock and the desire to dance in the open air spread throughout the Vida Festival on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Once inside the concert venue, everything was almost the same as before the pandemic, except that the public had to wear the FFP2 masks provided by the organization (in practice, their use was rather relaxed). For months work had been done to create safe environments from the health point of view and the experience of the pilot concert at the Palau Sant Jordi convinced the Government, which with the authorization of the Procicat gave the go-ahead to the three festivals with prior antigen screening ( the third is the Cruïlla). But not everything went as planned.

The Canet Rock has announced that it will be held in the Pla d'en Sala on 3 July with 22,000 people. There will be no safety distances, but there will be face masks and mandatory antigen tests. It will be the next step after the observational studies that were done in the Sala Apolo for 500 people in December and the one organised by the Festivals per la Cultura Segura at the Palau Sant Jordi for 5,000 people in March. They will be supervised by the Fundación Lucha contra el Sida y las Enfermedades Infecciosas and, according to the organisers, they will do it following the guidelines of the Health Ministry and Procicat. There will be a subsequent epidemiological control of the public. In the words of Dr. Bonaventura Clotet: "We endorse the strategy that will be followed at the Cruïlla concert, the Canet Rock and Vida Festival, which will incorporate strategies to rule out people who may be carriers of the virus with rapid tests and allow us to give all the security that those who participate in the concerts can enjoy the music and the relationships involved with peace of mind". The doctor says that it is necessary to "normalise social life the sooner the better".