“We are closed and all the staff in the temporary employment regulation dossier,” explained Michel Labat, from the Zentral Room in Pamplona. “The current situation is absolutely uncertain,” says Alex López Allende of the Dabadaba room in San Sebastian. “The premise is to keep as much as possible and freeze as much as possible from the cost wheel. We are trying to imagine the way out of this, but at the moment we are at the mercy of it,” he added. A similar picture has also happened at the Kafe Antzokia in Bilbao, where they have lost 20 March and 26 April, “with the loss that this entails for our house, for our employees, suppliers, groups and associations, and for our customers,” they explain.

In the best case, the concert halls will be open on 25 May and taking into account the limits set for live performances in the four-stage deconfinement announced last Tuesday by the Spanish Government – in the closed premises they can gather up to a maximum of 50 people – the future of the halls is staggered. The Kafe Antzokia has made it clear to this media when it asks whether the end of the tunnel is close: "What may be closer to the measures announced is the disaster. The measures announced do not set out a context that makes our work viable.” They will suffer economic losses due to the established capacity limitations, not only in the cultural programming, but also in the hospitality services essential to guarantee this fact.

“We would lack the leg that supports the structure,” explained López Allende de Dabadaba. “David already does many concerts for less than 100 people, also for 50. They reflect more minority scenes, riskier genres, new talents still unknown... All these concerts are always deficient, and their realization is possible thanks to the concerts that fill the room to the top”. That is, the expenses of a room are the same and you can hardly change anything, either for 50 people or for 300. “Therefore, it is not viable.”

The plants also do not know when and how they will be able to open the room of the Plaza de los Burgos de Pamplona: "We're not going to start policing. This reminds me of what's happening with the smoking ban: You see someone inside and you put the fine on me," Labat explained. “And now I’m guilty of infecting people? We have no courage or desire to get into it.”

Silence of new normality

This situation makes it difficult for concerts to be organised in compliance with conditions without major economic losses. Labat from the Zentral Hall has talked about rehearsing new formulas, such as double sessions. In their view, artists would endeavour to make such attempts, as everyone is in a critical situation at the moment and feels a certain tendency to help each other. “But we don’t have the framework to be able to do this.”

“Carrying out exercises to adapt to an unsustainable situation is difficult. First, there will be a sustainable situation for everyone (rooms, groups, clients...) and from there the necessary measures will be taken,” said Kafe Antzokia.

Asked whether there is a risk that ticket prices will increase to balance the economic balance in concerts with a small audience, López Allende has ruled out this possibility: “This is not just a crisis in our sector, but it will reduce the purchasing power of the whole of society and, therefore, we will have to seek other kinds of solutions.”

However, like the Kafe Antzokia and Zentral, Dabadaba also aims to be able to adapt to the new situation. They also lack information: through the drops and delays of the media they are receiving the information needed for their work. It's not the best way to start making decisions.

Is the local scene strengthened?

We have also asked the representatives of these three chambers whether, in the near future, the situation is as red as it is, something positive can be seen. For example, if the conditions of mobility imposed by the Government of Spain, which has become the reference unit, allow the local scene to be strengthened, bearing in mind that for some time no musician from abroad will come.

“I am curious to see how the public would react to such programming,” explained López Allende. “Normally, at least in Donostialdea, it’s hard for a local artist to throw people away. But I'd like to see a scene unfold that's necessarily going to be more intimate. Complicities can arise between the artist and the public that are usually difficult to pass.”

But this conversion from the province to the border has great handicaps, even with regard to the local scene, according to those of the Kafe Antzokia: “It makes it impossible for us, however much we try, to find a positive aspect to this dramatic situation, and not just in our area. Any other loss is regrettable when compared to a situation in which groups and viewers can move freely. On the other hand, will the Navarros, Labortans and Sulatins of Gutarrak be able to approach?”

Contagious music

“We in the world of rock have to change a lot so that a concert in these conditions is safe,” added Labat. He says that we all have a point of psychosis inside because of the rapid spread of the coronavirus, and so we have to walk carefully. “If we start putting people in the halls anyway, we can give a bad image.” This puts another long-term doubt on the table: Will concerts be stigmatized as potential sources of pollution? Labat thinks no: “People don’t stigmatize the metro, even though it is where a lot of people are concentrated,” he said. But, yes, he regretted that we were put at home "through fear".

López Allende doubts about this possible stigmatization, “and not only with music, but with any other activity that demands greater closeness. I don’t know what kind of fears we’ve been able to catch, and they will all be intelligible.”

But as we have been told from the Kafe Antzokia, “music, dance, theater, bertsolarism... have always been contagious in free thought, in the air of freedom... The other kind of stigma will dispel people’s good senses, as will happen with the disease we suffer.”