A-Infos (en) Spaine, Regeneracion: Macrofestivals or the Romanticization of Hyperconsumption (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Original text published in El Salto. ---- There is no ethical 
macrofestival, just as there is no bank that thinks about people. The 
way social relationships are built, as well as the place from which they 
are produced, are important. If we want to change the pillars of this 
world, we cannot afford to continue thinking of leisure as a territory 
alien to political responsibility. ---- The text you are about to read 
is born, first and foremost, from self-criticism. Creative reflection 
that allows us to discern the motives from which we act, think, or 
inhabit spaces, be they political, personal, or, as is the case, 
leisure-always understanding the porosity of all of them that prevents 
us from analyzing them as watertight spaces. The leisure we consume is 
political, and there is no greater example of this than macrofestivals 
or festivals with pretensions of becoming macro, a stage to which any 
neoliberal project aspires. From a self-critical perspective, we elevate 
our analysis to a structural critique of an unsustainable, precarious, 
hyper-consumerist, and culturally homogenizing model.

As daughters of our generation, we attend events without fully 
understanding the reasons that draw us there. Is it social pressure, 
with the recently named FOMO- Fear of Missing Out -as a catalyst? Is it 
overstimulation fueled by social media? Is it the purchase of a 
pre-existing emotion? Or is it the romanticization of spaces that claim 
to be countercultural but are the polar opposite of that? The authors of 
this text began attending festivals back in 2012, and we're not ashamed 
to say that ViñaRock 2024 was the stormy summit that prompted us to 
write these lines. We're not unconscious; we went to this latest 
festival knowing in advance what we would find and the contradictions we 
would face. It's important to note that we're not seeking to single 
out-or at least not exclusively-the people who will be consuming 
festivals this season. We want it to be read, at the very least, as a 
contradiction to our ideas-and yes, in the following lines we will 
primarily address the festivals, groups, and spectators who call 
ourselves anti-capitalist.

Spain is one of the countries with the largest concentration of 
festivals in a single month-due in part to its climate. However, these 
time frames have been distorted by the quantitative increase in 
festivals. Every city, town, or hamlet seems to want its own slice of 
the pie. A sweet treat adulterated long before its exposure to the free 
market. Promoters, investors, and other beneficiaries of this business 
model require public subsidies, which many city councils gladly provide 
so their city's name appears on a poster alongside artists of 
international or national standing. A large part of the investment, 
therefore, comes from public funds, but the profits are private-we 
already know how the perverse game we are trying to combat works. An 
example of this is Benicassim, a city in the Levant that has hosted the 
Benicassim International Festival (FIB)-as well as others such as 
Rototom-for thirty years, and whose investment has no impact on the 
local population, which the rest of the year has no cultural spaces.

Our reading of the current situation brings us to positions where 
capitalism is in a phase of no return, whose final throes are 
unpredictable-international restructuring seems to confirm this-and it 
is here that this monster, imagined as indestructible, races forward to 
continue enriching itself at all costs before it runs headlong into 
planetary-or class-limits. Behind most of the Spanish macro-festivals is 
the US investment fund Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR), with Superstruct 
Entertainment as a satellite of its business. El Salto Diario, in a 
recent investigative piece , discovered KKR's connection to colonialist 
Zionism by enriching itself through real estate speculation in occupied 
Palestinian territory. It also has stakes in cybersecurity and 
technology companies that the Israeli state uses in its imperialist 
machinery. As if all this were not enough, it also manages 55% of the 
real estate assets of Sareb, which has been the undisputed protagonist 
of the housing problem in our country.

Returning to the music scene, KKR acquired The Music Republic, a 
Valencian-based promoter, to manage them. And yes, those who sell an 
alternative or left-wing lineup also have these conglomerates behind 
them. It's ironic that at festivals like ViñaRock, we belt out 
anti-capitalist lyrics while donating money to a US fund on May 1st, a 
date that is anything but trivial. Perhaps some readers think we've 
dwelt too heavily on ViñaRock throughout this text. We don't do this out 
of visceral malice; it's the oldest self-proclaimed left-wing festival 
of all, with almost three decades of existence. Therefore, it has 
traveled more stages on the path to liberalism. We believe that smaller 
festivals will follow the same path if they don't find another 
mirror-one with a less distorted reflection-in which to look. As Nando 
Cruz points out, "We'll soon be facing a scenario sponsored by the shady 
cryptocurrency business or by a bank that finances weapons 
manufacturing, but we'll turn a blind eye as soon as Patti Smith appears 
disheveled and bellowing " People Have the Power . " A premonition has 
come true.

We believe it's important to highlight the boycott by music groups of 
festivals that rely on KKR as an investment fund. Groups such as 
Tremenda Jauria, Reincidentes, Los Chikos del Maíz, and Non Servium, 
among many others, have decided to no longer play at venues that finance 
genocide. Particularly noteworthy is Non Servium's statement, which does 
not focus exclusively on this connection and points to other significant 
issues leading to the boycott of these venues, such as Viña del Mar, 
Arenal Sound, FIB, Sónar, Monegros, Resurrección Fest, and O Son do 
Camiño. The latter is unique in that it received, through a KKR branch, 
public investment from the Galician regional government without prior 
competition.

By targeting foreign investment funds, we're not seeking to romanticize 
the local boss. The difference is that, if necessary, we can put a face 
to him and damage his business with our direct action. With good 
organization, even the most indestructible and anonymous Wall Street 
tycoon of all can be brought down.

The concentration of cultural power in a few companies is nothing new, 
but the level of sophistication with which profitability is disguised 
under narratives of diversity and musical expertise is. Major labels 
like Universal Music Group and BMG, and promoters like The Music 
Republic, transformed into macro-event managers, are vying for a 
cultural hegemony that-far from being diverse-has become a living 
catalog of commercial playlists . These dynamics can be observed in the 
existence of the cyclical festival model or the proliferation of 
franchises like Boombastic. If we review the macro-festivals scheduled 
for this 2025 season, from May to September, we will find the same 
groups on a whopping nine or ten lineups-pulling a thread, these are the 
ones that have agreements with the major labels and promoters associated 
with the investment fund KKR.

If there are genres that don't fit into these formats, they've ended up 
reproducing the same logic in their own niches. The consequence is that 
music becomes an excuse with emotional potential serving the desire for 
entertainment. Sound quality or even comprehension of the lyrics take a 
backseat. Many venues are still acoustically disastrous, and the 
solution is usually a giant screen, a measure that supports the visual 
aspect of these mass events, not the sound-though there must be 
fireworks for the aftermovie. We also suffer from two concerts stepping 
on each other's toes, producing an effect closer to a rush-hour market 
than a concert.

It's becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish between what is 
presented as alternative culture and what responds to aspirational 
logic. We have tended to think that there were at least two distinct 
festival circuits, relatively independent of each other, especially on a 
musical level-we are referring, for example, to Iruña Rock, Juergas 
Rock, or Rabo Lagartija. However, it's clear that sponsors tend to 
coincide, and many bands move between the two. This observation is not 
intended to point to individual-or group-decisions by musicians, but 
rather to highlight a structural problem. The capitalist system has 
demonstrated a remarkable capacity to absorb anti-establishment 
discourses and dissident aesthetics, as long as they are profitable or 
marketable. Thus, what in certain contexts may have political or 
symbolic value does not guarantee or imply a real driving force for the 
construction of a counterculture.

We now analyze the reasons why festivals have become the greatest 
example of turbocapitalism. This term refers to the imperative need 
created in consumers to digest all the available delicacies-even if they 
all taste suspiciously the same. Why do we constantly plan for upcoming 
entertainment without having fully digested the present? Busy weekends 
months in advance, overflowing emotions that consist of selling 
satisfaction in exchange for never fully satisfying it, as Zygmunt 
Bauman once said. Consumers buy tickets months-or even years-in advance 
due to the need created by companies. These economists have marketing 
strategies whose success is more than proven, such as tiered price 
increases-thinking you can only afford admission within the first ten 
minutes of sale generates that need for consumption that they exploit to 
the fullest. For us, turbocapitalism is endless consumption. It ranges 
from selling emotions beforehand, to constant encouragement during the 
event, to self-deception on social media, to buying a new ticket a few 
days after the event in question has ended. Marketing a festival 
involves designing a narrative, more specifically an audiovisual 
fiction, in which every aspect of the perfect experience is planned, 
which ultimately bears little relation to a reality you're not quite 
sure whether you enjoyed or survived.

At what point did it seem logical to us to attend five annual festivals 
with 50 concerts each? Hyperconsumption is similar to the Interrail 
model so common on the Old Continent. You get home and you're not sure 
if a particular image was seen in a particular city. The same thing 
happens with festival concerts: the images are altered because our 
capacity is limited, and fatigue takes its toll on our memory. Even 
before the show is over, the heightened anxiety of reaching another 
stage sets in. There's no break to recapture what we've just 
experienced. We've accepted arriving exhausted from our leisure time due 
to an endless cycle of consumption.

The companies behind festivals indirectly-though not 
unwittingly-incentivize the consumption of substances that allow people 
to reach the final stage of a consumerist tourmalet with energy . The 
marathon schedules lead many people-especially if their energy starts to 
become limited-to cheat . These traps are well known to all those who 
attend festivals. This creates a market in which the beneficiaries are 
not precisely our friends from our social class. This is not the place 
to analyze the reasons why drugs have been introduced and interpreted as 
alternatives or disruptive by many people who call themselves left-wing, 
without even a modicum of criticism of what their leisure time 
generates, something that doesn't occur with other types of consumption 
(food, drinks, etc.). We want to point out here that the lack of rest 
normalized at these events can lead to consumption that otherwise 
wouldn't occur.

All this drug use-legal or not-translates into prioritizing the party, 
the vibe , the debauchery, over musical tastes, good acoustics, or 
cultural debate. It's worth analyzing why we've integrated a constantly 
altered consciousness into music. Users of this type of entertainment 
tend to interpret it as impossible to attend concerts without drinking 
alcohol, alcohol for which we end up paying more than the festival 
ticket itself. The real profit of festivals is concentrated in beer 
sales, something their marketing departments know. Tickets don't cost 80 
euros; they end up costing 250.

The hyperconsumption of alcohol, fast food-or, failing that, food 
wrapped in plastic from Mercadona-and camping gear brings with it 
another reality that needs to be addressed: the ecological 
unsustainability of these models. Even if proper waste management were 
implemented, something unacceptable the larger the festival, this model 
is the antithesis of environmentalism. The fact that thousands of us 
want to flock to a geographical location for an artificial experience 
lasting just a few days, that a festival is set up from nothing, that we 
have not the slightest awareness of the impact on local populations, 
that we buy things that we will only throw away after a few days-if 
you've stayed until the end of a festival, you'll know the number of 
single-use items left there: chairs, tables, tents, inflatable 
mattresses, etc.-these are aspects we cannot ignore.

Why do many people who call themselves environmentalists decide to turn 
a blind eye here? There is no major festival-with or without proper 
waste management-that doesn't involve pollution of the surrounding 
countryside. It's heartbreaking to see how gardens, land, houses, or 
town squares are filled with garbage during the days we colonize these 
places so alien to our reality. Perhaps the city-country classism that 
those of us raised with the urban value system exude is palpable here. 
Villarrobledo-the town that hosts Viña del Mar-is known by millions of 
city dwellers whose fellow countrywomen we ignore. At least some of them 
decide to profit from this invasion, either by opening showers in their 
homes or selling cans. Others, however, show their anger by displaying 
signs against the festival and the colonizers it attracts. At what point 
did we accept these extractive measures on the territory? We believe it 
stems from a lack of analysis of what our actions imply due to the class 
disconnection we suffer.

And what about the workers? Behind the marketing, we find precariousness 
at all levels. Starting at the top, the difference between the cachet of 
one group and another can be thousands of euros, and emerging bands 
often earn their pay based on visibility-with typography on the poster 
that's not suitable for the near-sighted. The landscape is opaque in 
terms of figures, but the issue of cachets is important in that they are 
not fixed amounts, but are negotiated based on popularity, supply and 
demand, or business competition, generating increasingly abusive rates 
that favor cultural uniformity. Let's not even talk about the assembly 
workers, bartenders, or cleaners. In many cases, working conditions are 
not only precarious, they are downright illegal. Endless hours, 
under-the-table or nonexistent payments, nonexistent contracts, and 
WhatsApp groups as the only source of official communication are what 
has been reproduced every year. If this already sounds terrible and has 
been made visible through complaints, social media, and the testimonies 
of many workers, there is a recent phenomenon that borders on dystopia. 
Volunteering, or in other words, the exploitation of young workers 
through participation programs that allow the festival to perform 
essential tasks while saving a few salaries. The result is cheap labor 
sustained by the enthusiasm of young people with little knowledge of 
their labor rights and sectoral agreements. We could also talk about the 
number of precariously employed people-most of them migrants-who gather 
around festivals to sell any kind of product at a loss.

The chain of exploitation doesn't end with the workers; many festivals 
have recently been reported by the Organization of Consumers and Users 
(OCU) for the violation of rights within their venues. One example is 
the standardization of payment with tokens, reloadable via the event 
wristband. This method has been imposed under the guise of efficiency, 
safety, and reduced wait times. It has become an opaque strategy of 
economic control with impractical multiples that force people to spend 
more than they want and make it difficult to return the remaining 
balance by establishing reimbursement periods shorter than the legal 
deadlines. The General Law for the Defense of Consumers and Users 
establishes that businesses are required to accept payments in the legal 
currency of the state. Furthermore, the scheme is designed to generate 
anxiety, urgency, and impulsive decisions.

Added to all this is a particularly sensitive issue: security, exercised 
as a form of intensive and aggressive surveillance. Instead of 
prioritizing the genuine well-being of attendees, a punitive logic is 
imposed, with forces focused on control and repression. The recent news 
about ViñaRock hiring the security company Triple A, whose members have 
been integrated into Desokupa-a fascist paramilitary group-is 
confirmation of how rotten this sector is. At the same time, measures 
against any type of aggression are insufficient, symbolic, or 
ineffective. The lack of protocols and professionals trained to respond 
to these types of situations leaves dissidents and women in particular 
in a position of permanent vulnerability-but don't worry, empathy comes 
in a holster, right next to the standard-issue weapon that screams safe 
space. Far from questioning this reality, the organizational response is 
to further commodify the experience. Privileged passes, exclusive areas, 
and premium services are offered , meaning the experience only improves 
if you can afford to pay more. Thus, classism creeps in, even in the 
color of the wristband you wear, transforming what should be a cultural 
space into an amusement park.

The youthful energy mixed with the romanticization of suffering in these 
places produces absurd images that we wouldn't accept in other settings. 
Having to defecate in the stubble-leaving the toilet paper there-paying 
for bottled water at an inflation rate comparable only to that of 
airports, or not showering at all these days, given the difficulty it 
sometimes entails, are common practices. The lack of hygiene in these 
concentration barracks is a constant. We're not asking for scented 
candles or floral aromas, just a minimum that meets physiological needs. 
Bathrooms commensurate with the number of people attending the events, 
cleanliness, free drinking water, adequate shade, and proper waste 
management. Unsurprisingly, this business model doesn't care about the 
people who support it or about sustainability itself.

If the dubious cultural impact generated by this format-which enriches 
small property owners, investment funds, and public institutions-weren't 
already clear, claiming that it generates any kind of local roots is 
like claiming a shopping center promotes local culture. Local roots are 
impossible when the model consists of landing, plundering, billing, and 
leaving. And even less so when the musical programming has zero relation 
to the context in which the event is held. In many cases, there isn't a 
single local band on the entire lineup, and the presence of women and 
dissidents is minimal, as the Valor Manchego Association already 
denounced in its critique of the Viña del Mar event. We have seen how 
city councils prioritize disbursing multimillion-dollar subsidies to 
these instant-profit machines over funding the creation of a sustainable 
cultural fabric. Along the way, administrations are praising themselves 
or boasting about a few press mentions, only satisfying tourists and 
hoteliers-not hospitality workers. What remains after the street 
saturation, the temporary privatization of public space, the waste, and 
noise pollution is the systematically ignored neighborhood organization.

In Madrid, the Regional Federation of Neighborhood Associations (FRAVM) 
has launched a document addressing these issues, while also warning of 
more problematic dynamics such as eventification and neighborhood 
gentrification-eventification translates into the replacement of the 
resident figure with that of the attendee disconnected from the urban 
context. It also fosters what is known as transnational gentrification, 
derived from globalist aspirations, in which posters increasingly 
feature international music scenes rather than territorially located 
ones. All of this exacerbates the current housing crisis by replacing 
regular rentals with temporary rentals at prices inflated by the need 
for temporary accommodation. Common spaces are fading away in favor of 
socially homogeneous spaces, but the truly distressing thing is that all 
these dynamics point to a model of urban space organization that is 
never for those who inhabit it.

These urban impacts have been very little researched in their potential 
long-term repercussions, but they are already palpable within the 
community. In the midst of the housing crisis, it is urgent to 
understand that these hyper-designed spaces are a threat competing for 
the very land we are fighting for. Let's ground this urgency so as not 
to be alarmist. Medusa Sunbeach and Arenal Sound on the Levantine 
coast-a record territory for the number of macro-festivals-have served 
as a lever to reactivate mega-urban development projects frozen after 
the 2008 crisis. Idealizations of empty land, abandoned plots, or even 
protected areas are contributing to the change in tourism profiles, 
generating new forms of urban development. Thus, PAI Bega-Port in 
Cullera and PAI Sant Gregori in Burriana, both in 2025, have been 
relaunched with the political support of the PSPV, PP, and Vox. All 
happy to see how cultural leisure is once again making land profitable 
for speculative purposes. In essence, we are witnessing private capital 
redesigning the urban map with music playing in the background.

And why is there so little critical reporting on festivals? Beyond 
notable examples like Nando Cruz's book, Macrofestivales: El agujero 
negro de la música (Macrofestivals: The Black Hole of Music), the 
silence of the press is a constant. Perhaps it's understandable if the 
workings of the media's business model are exposed. We're not breaking 
new ground if we say that the same companies are behind festivals and 
the media. Radio 3 or Los 40 Principales, which in turn are part of a 
larger conglomerate-whether state-owned or private-are visible faces of 
some events. The curious thing about the business functioning of the 
media is their maxim: don't bite the hand that can feed you-not just the 
one that currently feeds you. If a media outlet criticizes a festival 
sponsored by a beer brand, it won't be later advertised in the pages or 
on the airwaves of the outlet in question, so it won't be criticized at 
any point. Freedom of the press in so-called democratic states is false; 
capitalism rules the editorial boards. This doesn't take into account, 
of course, the cronyism between media owners and brands that ties the 
hands of even the most well-intentioned journalist willing to expose 
this. The true master of opinion pieces is private capital, and only 
through a sense of freedom of action or strong political convictions can 
one accuse them of their actions. There are also other factors, such as 
agenda setting , a formula followed by the mainstream media to decide, 
in collusion with capital, what is newsworthy and what isn't, as well as 
how much media space is given to it, which translates into public 
concerns. A paradigmatic case of our times is the alarm over squatting 
as opposed to evictions, due to the amount of time the former occupies 
in the news, despite the fact that there are countless other cases of 
the latter. We fear the squatter, not the banker or the police officer 
who carries out the eviction, due to the intervention of agenda setting 
, that is, capitalism in the last instance.

It's time to contribute a proactive element. We want to collectively 
rethink our ways of leisure and consumption, even though we haven't left 
any stone unturned in the previous lines-passion drives us. We don't 
have magic formulas, but we do have clues or examples to follow. You 
won't find here the names of festivals that are following lines that 
break-to the extent possible-with what was described above. We won't 
mention them precisely so as not to contribute to their massification. 
There are examples of festivals that don't announce the exact date until 
a few weeks before the event. This way, they ensure that many people 
won't have availability when they do-thus also avoiding the need to 
purchase advance tickets-and only those who truly want to attend will 
attend, at the risk that some, for work reasons, among other things, 
won't be able to attend. There are examples of models that are little 
publicized precisely so as not to lose sight of the local culture or 
respect for its inhabitants. That is, cases that break with the 
exhibition/business model of social media. There are also self-organized 
models that, consequently, don't have private profit. Examples of the 
coordination of hundreds of people investing whatever meager profits 
they may have in music groups-often local-or in infrastructure for the 
following year. There are examples of models that break with the 
dynamics of concentration and hyperconsumption, something that is also 
interesting to explore, but we don't want to settle for small plots of 
alternative leisure.

We don't want to close this piece without analyzing why we've accepted 
that our musical consumption is centered on festivals and not on forms 
that once functioned as free open-air venues or concerts with benefits 
included for the residents of the local population in question. We also 
appeal to a way of inhabiting leisure spaces in line with degrowth. If 
the festival-or whatever-has gotten out of control, perhaps it's not our 
place, and although it may sometimes be a cry into the void, we can try 
not to contribute to the spread of an echo that we know is harmful. 
People who call themselves left-wing, whose habits are ultra-capitalist 
and don't identify politically beyond the aesthetic-unfortunately too 
many-can't find another way to inhabit leisure spaces or any space in 
general. Only through involvement-also comforting, even if it's hard to 
see from the outside-can we break with the hedonistic hyperconsumption 
of our class. Let's empower spaces with awareness, among ourselves, 
contributing to their existence and not just consuming in them. Let's 
ask ourselves why we want to be everywhere at the same time. Let's 
accept that if we want to change everything tomorrow, everyday 
individual gestures matter. Let's reflect on living and contributing to 
our places of origin, breaking with the idea of constantly traveling to 
the repetitive event of the moment, with the extraction and harm we are 
encouraging. Let's stop idealizing the artist and so blithely upholding 
a cultural model that expels the working class-at least those who are 
aware of it. Imagining another art is difficult, but perhaps we can 
start by accepting that it doesn't win stories, nor can it be evicted; 
such a thing cannot be demanded of it. What is desirable is that it once 
again become a weapon in our hands that helps spread-or agitate-our 
ideas. Let's organize and fight for a new world. Boycott, health, and 
success.

Elena Zaldo, member of the Granada Housing Union, and Andrés Cabrera, 
member of Impulso.

https://www.regeneracionlibertaria.org/podcast/macrofestivales-o-la-romantizacion-del-hiperconsumo/
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