The complaint of a single neighbor forces the Bóveda room to cease its activity. The room has shared a statement on networks regarding the situation.
This is the statement that the room has shared:
As most of you already know, Sala Bóveda has to immediately stop doing concerts by administrative order. It goes without saying how difficult it is for all of us to face this hard blow, in the face of a situation that we consider completely unfair.
A measure of this type has more consequences than it may initially seem. Many people are affected by a measure of this type. Venue workers who have given everything during these years and who are left without work overnight, hundreds of musicians and promoters – we had 78 concerts scheduled for the next few months – who will find it very difficult to reschedule their concerts in other venues on the dates they had reserved, with the consequent economic – and moral – impact that this represents.
We would like to first of all thank you for the wonderful response we have had from all these musicians and promoters when we communicated the news to them. Each and every one of them has given us their encouragement and put their empathy towards the room above the individual damage that it causes to each of them. It is something that has excited us and it is the only positive part that we have taken from all this. Nor do we want to ignore the hundreds of messages that have reached us through networks or individually in the last 24 hours. Also thank the different associations that fight for live music culture and fair nightlife – Associació de Sales de Concerts de Catalunya (ASACC), Catalan Federation of Nightlife Venues (FECALON) and El Gremi de Discoteques de Barcelona – who have been on our side from the first moment. This helps us fight harder to reverse this difficult situation.
The reason why the venue closes its live music activity comes from a neighbor who arrived during the pandemic and who has made our lives impossible from the first moment, with little intention of collaborating and solving the problem. In the more than 30 years that the room has been open, first as Mephisto and later as Bóveda, there has never been any problem with the neighbors. The relationship has always been excellent and our doors have always been open to them. The room has always made it a priority not to cause any problems and these 30 years without incidents prove it. The total irony of the situation comes from the fact that this neighbor does not live there, that he has used a commercial basement to make tourist accommodation by renting rooms without being clear that he has permission to do so. It is difficult to understand how the administration is allowing this activity to be carried out and even more so when the residents of the property have not been consulted for it nor, of course, have given their approval. This is really creating a problem for them with the constant coming and going of people, parties and noise during ungodly hours. The court has already launched a complaint against this situation. ASACC will also issue a statement, explaining this situation in a more concrete and technical way.
Now Bóveda’s priority is to try to save the total closure of the room, scheduled for Tuesday the 26th, so that the night session can continue. To try to explain it in a simple way, live and night sound equipment are different. At concerts there are certain peaks of sound – drum snares, distortions, saturated bass or the audience itself singing or applauding – that cause the established limit to be exceeded at some point. As we have made clear, this has never been a problem for anyone until the arrival of this neighbor. The night session equipment does not have these types of problems, hence the night activity can develop without problems. But for this activity to continue, the first measure is to stop the concerts for the moment.
From now on, a long struggle begins to return to where we were. A large part of Bóveda’s reason for existing is live music and to be left without it is to tear away a part of us. We reiterate again our gratitude for the support we have received and that no one doubts that the fight to have music again begins from this very moment
