Summer time (part 2)
P2: Primavera Sound Festival, Barcelona
I love festivals because they’re like theme-parks aimed at adults with live music instead of rides. I’ve been going to festivals since reaching legal drinking age and as I’ve got older, I’ve found a different kind of joy in them.
Previously, I liked festivals because of the drunken mishmash of music, rolling around fields and general chaotic fun. These days, I like them because they’re an escape from work and normality – people get dressed up and drunk, but also horse around like they’re not a solicitor. Plus, it’s one of the only places I get to hang out for an extended period of time with old friends putting aside our worldly worries for a weekend.
I mean true, as my budget’s got better, I’m not slumming it in a flooded field with zero nutrition. Primavera Sound is a city festival that’s held in one of the cultural capitals of the world: Barcelona.
You stumble across what looks like melting architecture around the streets made by Gaudi. And because I was too late in booking tickets to see the Sagrada Familia, we visited the Gaudi House which had been lit pretty fabulously and would recommend. There are galleries filled with Modernist painters, though Joan Miró will always have a place in my heart, so we took a funicular railway up a hill overlooking the city to go to his gallery.
The food is delicious! We ate cured meats, hard cheeses and bottles of chilled pink cava (all for some ridiculous price of 20 Euros) before the first night of the festival. I never expected to be so well-dined before thrashing around to Charli XCX.
There’s a beach! Which I’d completely forgotten about. After arriving in the city, I texted my chums to find out they were chilling on the beach and I kicked myself for having to join them in pants and bra.
The festival is held in this huge concrete park, which feels a bit like an abandoned airfield by the sea, so you get the sea breeze and the sky fills at sunset with blush hues. There are beer tents everywhere and Aperol spritz on tap catering for the make-up of the crowd: a third Brits, a third Irish, a third Spanish.
The headliners of Primavera were what we were all really after. The Powerpuff Girls of the indie-party-house-genre: Charli XCX, Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan. But the acts around them I’d wanted to see all delivered like Haim, Beach House, Nourished By Time, CMAT. Others too I can’t remember.
The music, the vibes, everything was great. But what really made it was my friends. <3
Read about my 3 P’s of summer time:
P2: Primavera