Day 11: Barcelona
Welcome
Yesterday we played at Primavera Sounds Festival in Barcelona, Spain.
I had a feeling that the hotel breakfast would be worth waking up for despite my late night, and I wasn’t wrong. There was a huge spread with everything from fresh fruit to freshly made waffles, and it was a tough job not to serve up an embarrassing amount of food. I had a plate of savoury with buttered brown baguette, cheese, pickled beetroot, olives, tortilla, and an egg. I also had a plate of sweet with honeydew melon, watermelon, pineapple, kiwifruit, hazelnuts, and honeycomb.
After eating I went back to bed for a couple of hours so I could sink further into the festival time zone, rising again at 2pm to do a bit of work before our pickup arrived. An hour later we were on our way to the Primavera grounds in Parc del Fòrum, located right on the water in between the districts of Sant Martí and Sant Adrià de Besòs. Our stage was in a picturesque location, next to a marina and a boat repair yard, and while we set up our equipment, we watched yachts and pleasure craft heading out into the Balearic for an afternoon of deep leisure.
The huge solar panel next to our stage which apparently powers 140 homes.
The daughter of our driver is a fan of the band and made us this artwork.
There were a lot of positives about our experience as an artist at Primavera Sounds. When we arrived, we were met by our stage manager who introduced herself and showed us our green room, which contained a nice assortment of refreshments and was located right behind the stage. There was also a communal area for artists and festival workers, with snacks, coffee, a keg of Estrella, as many energy drinks as you would ever need, and even a water cooler serving clean, chilled water.
The communal area.
Our green room.
The festival workers were all extremely friendly, having just returned from a lunch break as we were arriving; a small creature comfort which must go a long way to improving their ability to function throughout the day. They do the festival in two shifts so no-one is tired and overworked as is so often the case at music festivals. While we enjoyed the sea breeze the technicians calmly set about running cables and getting the stage ready for the evening. There were a few technical hiccups, but we had everything solved and we were sound checked and ready with fifteen minutes to spare, a very stress-free experience, for a change.
We were finished setting up so early that Liz had time to begin labeling things.
This was the view of the boatyard from the side of our stage.
Down she goes.
We were thrilled with how many people came to watch us, having only played a handful of Spanish shows in our career. As we played, we could see people parasailing out on the water, and boats heading out from the marina stopped in for a listen. Our set seemed to be well received and we felt very privileged to be playing in this beautiful setting.
Gabe’s view of our set.
Our driver took us back to the hotel afterwards so we could return our equipment, and then Tristan, Gabe, and I walked back to the festival to enjoy an evening of music. While there were many great acts we saw, the highlight was without a doubt Alvvays, who are in fine form at the moment and played a blasting set in the prime timeslot of 10.10pm on their stage which was epically set underneath a giant array of solar panels.
Looking out towards the main stages. It is a good twenty minute walk to get from one end of the festival to the other.
At 3am we began to make our way back to the hotel to get ready for a 4am transfer to the airport and an early morning flight to Hamburg.
Here is the latest thing that Tristan has been working on, a juicy nine minutes highlight reel of our day at Primavera.