5,000 attend rock concert in Barcelona after taking Covid test

Ticket buyers were able to take an antigen test at one of three venues in the city - if their test came back negative, they were allowed to attend the event and mix freely while inside

Spanish music fans attended a coronavirus-screened concert on Saturday night to test the strategy’s effectiveness in preventing coronavirus outbreaks at future cultural events.

Five thousand people were able to attend the concert in Barcelona’s Palau Sant Jordi concert hall after passing a same-day coronavirus test, on the condition that everyone inside wore a high-quality facemask provided by the organisers, except while eating and drinking.

Ticket buyers were able to take an antigen test at one of three venues in the city. If their test came back negative, they were allowed to attend the event and mix freely while inside. 

Ticket buyers were notified of their results via their mobile phones, with those eligible receiving a code validating their tickets. 

People with heart disease, cancer, or those who have been in contact with someone infected by COVID-19 in recent weeks were asked not to sign up.

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The event was the largest commercial event held in Europe since the onset of the pandemic, organisers said. 

Tickets for the sold-out Love of Lesbian show were between €23 and €28 each and included the cost of the test and mask provided at the venue. 

The show was able to go ahead with permission from the Spanish health authorities and was backed by experts of Barcelona’s The Fight AIDS and Infectious Diseases Foundation. 

The concert followed a similar, but much smaller, event of 500 people which took place last December, which was a success. 

“This is another small step toward being able to hold concerts and cultural events” during the pandemic, said Dr. Boris Revollo, the virologist involved in the design of the health protocols.

To measure the success of the most recent concert, attendees agreed public health authorities can inform Revollo’s team if they contract coronavirus in the weeks after the concert. 

The information will then be analysed and compared to infection rates among the wider population to indicate whether or not mixing at the concert caused any infection. 

Concertgoer Jose Parejo, who is 40 years old said the concert was an escape from reality: “We were inside our small concert bubble. And we were even able to remember back in time when things like this one were normal,” he said. “Things that nowadays aren’t that normal, sadly.”

The concert came at a time when people in Spain are only allowed to mix with four people maximum in closed spaces.

Addressing the crowd, Love of Lesbians singer, Santi Balmes said that some of the musicians were even crying. “It’s been a year and a half since we last set foot on a scenario as a band,” he said. 

For 37-year-old Gerard Munne, it was a release.

“A sensation of freedom, being able to feel the warmth of the people,” he said. “(It was) yesterday’s normality.”

Additional reporting by AP