Barcelona is set to hold its first non-socially distanced concert this month with 5,000 fans expected to attend the event at the Palau Sant Jordi.
The 17,000 venue will see Spanish indie-pop band Love of Lesbian (pictured) perform to a masked crowd, who will be required to present a negative COVID-19 antigen test taken the same day.
Organisers of the concert, the Catalan government-backed initiative Festivals per la Cultura Segura, said that the gig, scheduled for March 27, will serve as a pilot to establish “a new protocol for holding events in the current context.”
The arena will be divided in zones of fewer than 1,800 people, with tickets, priced between €23 and €28, already sold out after going on sale on March 5.
The event will also utilise other health measures including a temperature check on entry, restricting entry to 18–65-year-olds, placing hand sanitising gel throughout the venue, and monitoring attendees via their smartphones, both during and after the show, when public health authorities will use the data for contact tracing purposes.
Organisers decided to go ahead with the event after a COVID-19 experiment held last month in Barcelona concluded that the use of antigen tests is an efficient strategy to enable the holding of concerts as none of the nearly 500 attendees at the event were infected.
The initiative is being coordinated by Barcelona’s leading music festivals, including Primavera Sound, which organised the Primacov experiment, Sónar, Cruïlla, Canet Rock, Vida Festival and Festival de Jazz de Barcelona.
Image: Alterna2 http://www.alterna2.com / CC BY 2.0 / Edited for size
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