Musical subcultures emerge: "There is a rock renaissance and we are part of it"

Cabró Rock, Canet Rock, Empordà Music Fest, Festiuet, Castanyada Rock. Beyond sharing scarce semantic creativity when it comes to naming, they are festivals with several points in common. Essentially two: they are the most massive in the country in the Catalan language, some with attendances exceeding 40,000 spectators, and they coincide in having practically identical lineups. The majority of the participating bands in these gatherings are the same. In fact, well-known names like La Fúmiga, Buhos, Figa Flawas, and The Tyets, for example, in this 2026 will play in all of them, as if it were an itinerant tour that jumps from summer to summer. The fact is that finally Catalonia can boast of having its own mass and consolidated scene in the country's language. This implies, for example, having several groups that accumulate millions of online plays, also a collection of massive meeting points, and a part of the industry that monopolizes the lucrative business of music in Catalan for all audiences. But as it could not be otherwise, whenever an official, harmless, and domesticated movement consolidates, a truly rich and exciting one comes along behind it.

A veteran hardcore band from Tarragona, CrimExamples? A veteran hardcore band from Tarragona, Crim, is putting up the sold-out poster at the entrance of a large Razzmatazz venue, with 2,000 people captivated. Or Fetus from Bisbal, who have long been one of the most prolific groups in the Catalan Countries, with six EPs released in nine years, the latest of which, Romancer tartera. To culminate each tour, those from La Bisbal de l'Empordà celebrate La Gran Xefla, a concert that has become a tradition and fills Barcelona's Sala Apolo. These are projects that work and do not follow the canons of today's music: they neither play the genre of the moment, nor do they have overexposure on social media, nor are they abducted by the mantra of constant novelty or by collaborations between musicians for the sake of it. Music made from the margins has always been outsider, and now many of these recently emerged projects are added an inseparable look to the past. If what triumphs now is digital and anticipating the future, they go for analog and homage to old bands and scenes. Like a cycle in which everything returns, including subcultures with their music, their clothes, and their ways of doing things. “It’s that ours are the shaved heads,” exclaim the Testarudes, new flag bearers of Jamaican roots sounds in Catalonia, referring to skinhead militancy.

Self-management and militancy

“It is a great honor to flee the predominant trend,” explain the members of La Rauxa, the latest quality addition to the local independent circuit. They have only recently started playing live and have just released their first album, De bon començament, a stylistic exercise in which they nod to yé-yé pop, northern soul, and other genres with roots in the sixties and seventies. “We are passionate about these sounds; we have always been linked to scenes with a predilection for these genres,” explains Leo Hernández, the band’s guitarist, which includes members from other local mod-influenced combos, such as Los Retrovisores or Trau, two still active names that have remained faithful to modernist principles since their inception.

Pepo Márquez, a former industry worker for multinationals like PIAS and Universal, explained a few weeks ago on a Subterfuge label podcast that he had received a business plan on how the career of a newly formed band should be. The most unexpected part was that they had developed it themselves and not a record label. La Rauxa are an example of resistance to these established ways of doing things in the sector. In fact, it's a radically opposite project: not only do they make music from other decades, but they don't have a management agency, nor a press officer, nor any kind of label releasing their records. They do everything themselves, without intermediaries. "Over time we began to see that the most coherent thing was to go for self-management," they explain. Working this way is the response to what they describe as "a system that systematically precarizes the work of musicians," and the solution they have found has been to form themselves as a cultural association, a tool that seeks to be a counter-power within a sector as complicated as this.

Sistered with La Rauxa are Les Testarudes. And not only because of the presence of Laura del Pino, singer of the former and founding member of the latter: but also because of their love for 45-inch vinyls, Fred Perry polos, and music of Jamaican heritage: ska, rocksteady, and reggae. Les Testarudes, who like La Rauxa have also just released their first full-length album –Ai, Mare!– and have militants in the Catalan Musicians Activists Union, are one of the best pieces of news in Catalan music of the last five years.

In addition to being the new national reference points for the latest wave of ska, a genre with a special predilection in our country, they have also been one of the popular music names that has clocked up the most road miles in recent years. If anyone has accumulated concerts, it's them. "At first we said yes to almost everything. From the beginning, we were clear that we would grow from our own spaces, that is, self-managed and decentralized ones," recounts Júlia Soler, trombonist for Les Testarudes. The band carries on the most militant political-musical tradition, in the style of The Clash and Kortatu, spreading music and discourse stoically and almost non-stop on both sides of the Catalan Countries, Euskal Herria, and Galicia. The van is smoking: "We have the energy to do it at this pace now," they explain.

No spaces at festivals

The emergence of Les Testarudes has been a breath of fresh air in a scene, the Jamaican one in Catalonia, traditionally male and somewhat aged: “There was a lack of generational renewal, of modernizing the discourse from a non-mixed perspective,” assures Amaia Hermoso de Mendoza, saxophonist of the combo, which is formed by nine girls from diverse backgrounds. The number of members in the project could make it falter –“maintaining a stable formation is our Achilles’ heel,” they say–, but they want to maintain their commitment to horizontality with all its consequences: they function in an assembly manner and work with a handful of commissions. “The expressions of each colleague are important. Everything is voted and decided by majority,” explains Soler.

Nowadays, few concerts can be seen with such potent energy as one by Les Testarudes, who, in addition to being excellent musicians, have a good number of followers who follow them everywhere. Despite this, and as happens with practically all the bands mentioned in this report, they are systematically ignored by the country's mass festivals. They are not the only case and the list would be long, but other examples that also sing in Catalan stand out, such as Roko Banana, Power Burkas, Les Salvatges, Trinitat Nova, Bons Nois, Ypnosi or The Parsimonians, who are really hard to see outside the circuit of venues or popular concerts. An example of good practice in artistic commitment is Tingladu, from Vilanova i la Geltrú, which each year excellently combines the most massive names in the country with other alternative and risky proposals. This summer, Els Pets and Nacho Vegas will share space with Crim, La Rauxa, Fetus and others in between, such as Svetlana, a group without subcultural baggage, but which has managed to sneak into media spaces without apparent godfathers.

A distinguishing feature they all share is their respect for the pop heritage of great bands they idolize and enthusiastically embrace. They are generally music lovers, they have studied their favorite LPs thoroughly and maintain the pop tradition of other decades. At a time when the LP format seems to have ceased to be important, Fetus releases an album every two years. The power trio from Empordà has been growing, in number and experience, and if they started by looking to the Surfing Sirles, from whom they took the most garage-rock coordinates, over time they have delved deeper into tavern punk, adding traditional instruments and lyrics of absolute current relevance in the form of a romance: against brunch, the Rodalies disaster or the dana tragedy. “We do what we like, and from there we set ourselves challenges,” explains Adrià Cortadelles, leader of the Empordà band, who even made an album, Sota, cavall i rei, adapting Jaume Arnella's songbook to punk.

In a time of autotunes and pre-recorded tracks, Fetus take the stage with bagpipes and Irish flutes, diatonic accordion and violins. For now, the group advances by adding a few hundred followers, almost literally, each year: "We are not people who make big public booms. Every year we organize a concert at Apolo and two hundred more people come than the previous one. That's fine with us," they say with smiles.

Freedom as a banner

Unlike their peers, Fetus enjoy considerable media presence, although this exposure has not opened the doors to major pop festivals. That said, they have gradually earned a place in the traditional scene: in 2026, they were the ones to open BarnaSants. As for the rest, the usual ones, no news: “We don’t know what’s happening that we’re not going. It’s a mystery, we don’t know the reason. Perhaps you don’t quite see someone like us, with pro-Spanish slogans, at the Vida festival”.

Given that all the bands are so conscious, another factor that generally concerns them when accepting a concert is the event's relationship with its sponsors. It’s important to know who is paying for the party. Les Testarudes, for example, look at everything in detail: “If it doesn’t fit us completely, we don’t play; we don’t want what happened to Remei to happen to us,” clarifies their trombonist. She refers to what happened to one of the country’s most popular emerging groups, Remei de Ca la Fresca, at the last edition of the Cruïlla festival. They found themselves playing on a stage named Vichy Catalan, performing just below the soft drink’s advertising. Far from playing, getting paid, and leaving, Xantal Rodríguez, the singer, took advantage of the microphone to denounce the exploitation of the Montseny's underground water resources by this company.

They may not have massive stages, but that's not what they value most: projection is not an end in itself. “There is nothing better than the freedom to make your music without thinking about whether you will play here or there. We operate the old-fashioned way, and today’s industry doesn’t,” explains Santi Fonfría, guitarist and vocalist of Minibús Intergalàctic. Also captivated by the mods, a subculture that in Catalonia has produced extraordinary names like Los Negativos or Brighton 64, these natives of Girona are one of the sensations of the season thanks to their new work, Moviment oscil·lant polinòmic y=1/x., a compendium of psychedelia, noise, and extraordinary melodies.

Minibús Intergalàctic was formed when they were students at the Faculty of History at the University of Girona and in a few years have proposed a musical journey that goes from the smoky Californian bands of the sixties and Pink Floyd with Syd Barrett, to Spacemen 3 and The Jesus & Mary Chain. Today, this is niche music, outside of any mass trend: "That's precisely why we formed the band, to get away from it. Catalonia has enough richness for groups of our style to exist and be successful. How is it possible that there isn't a minimally consolidated scene for music like this if it happens everywhere else? The reception the album has had confirms that we have a place," explains Fonfría.

Minibús Intergalàctic has recently been much talked about due to a curious but very striking anecdote: the president of the Spanish government, Pedro Sánchez, recommended them in one of his usual social media posts. It's a fun curiosity – "even Basté called us," they recall – but they acknowledge that it has had a much greater impact on listeners in Catalonia than outside. "You realize how complex our culture is, Catalanism itself, that Pedro Sánchez has to tell you to listen to new things," they say. In fact, the most notable increase in figures after that well-known publication was in Barcelona.

“We feel very well accompanied, there is a rock renaissance and we are part of it. Each band occupies its space,” details Fonfría. There is no doubt that the moment is exciting and it is worth paying attention to all these proposals that move away as much from the urban genre as from the worn commercial mestizaje that has reigned in the country's mass music in recent years. “I have the feeling that guitars are coming back. For now, there is Ludwig Band playing everywhere, but this will grow,” says the Fetus guitarist. Whether or not they return to the forefront, or are more or less intended for all audiences, these groups remind us that good songs are usually the most sincere. And they have sincerity to spare. “We are all comrades among ourselves,” explain Les Testarudes about the other names, and they are travel companions, even though the albums of one and the other may resemble each other like an egg to a chestnut. Get in their van, because great songs are playing there.