BARCELONA, Spain – If one overlooked the white masks splashing from the crowded music lovers, it was almost like a pre-pandemic era in the Palau Sant Jordi concert hall in Barcelona on Saturday night.
Five thousand rock fans enjoyed a concert as real as possible after passing a coronavirus test on the same day, to prove its effectiveness in preventing virus outbreaks at major cultural events.
The only rule within the show was the strict use of high quality facial masks provided by the concert organizers.
“We were able to evade reality for a while,” said José Parejo, 40. “We were inside our little concert bubble. And we were even able to remember the past when things like this were normal. Things that aren’t so normal today, unfortunately.”
The show of the Spanish rock group Love of Lesbian had the special permission of the Spanish health authorities. While the rest of the country was limited to meetings of no more than four people indoors, concert attendees were able to mingle freely.
The musicians also let themselves be carried away by the moment.
“It’s been a year and a half since we last set foot on a stage as a band,” singer Santi Balmes told the crowd. “That’s right. … some of the musicians are crying here.”
Ticket buyers chose from three locations in Barcelona where they could perform a quick antigen test on Saturday morning. Those with negative results got a code on their cell phones that validated their tickets for the 7 pm show.
People with heart disease, cancer, or those who have been in contact with someone infected with covid-19 in recent weeks were asked not to register.
Organizers said it was the first commercial event with such a large audience that it was held in Europe during the pandemic.
The show ran out. Tickets, ranging from 23-28 euros ($ 27-33), included the cost of the test and the mask which was mandatory except for eating or drinking in the designated areas.
The concert was supported by local authorities and experts from the The Fight AIDS and Infectious Diseases Foundation in Barcelona, which also organized a case study around a concert of less than 500 people at the December. They said the results of this preliminary case study show that preselection with antigen testing and the use of masks managed to prevent infections within the concert even though there are no rules of social distancing.
“This is another small step to be able to hold concerts and cultural events” during the pandemic, Dr. Boris Revollo, virologist involved in the design of health protocols.
In addition to being 10 times larger than the December concert, this time no control group was kept outside the concert hall.
Instead, attendees at the concert agreed that public health authorities can inform the Revollo team if they contract the coronavirus in the weeks following the concert. With this information, the Revollo team will do an analysis of infection rates among the 5,000 attending the concert compared to that of the general population to see if there is any discrepancy that could point to a contagion at the concert.
For Gerard Munne, 37, it was a release.
“A sense of freedom, being able to feel the warmth of people,” he said. “(It was) yesterday’s normalcy.”