For many years, disco has been a happy way for Madrid to breathe inward, to blame everything on the strangeness of time, to engage with strangers and to make one’s voice heard, even in the middle of a slightly awkward crowd. … Psychedelic and a little dancey.
For me, discos happened seriously, but then they didn’t happen anymore, and it was half the time of illumination, when the night in Madrid became not a time zone, but rather an emotional education, the mayor. Instead of a beach, Madrid gave us nightclubs. And now it turns out that the top nightclub Teatro Barcelo (formerly Pacha) is gone. If capacity is exceeded, closures will be announced for nearly a year.
For me, this news suddenly brought back memories of disco and even nostalgia for it. Because I had gone years without going to a disco, and somewhere in a disco I was young, illegal, and happy. Teatro Barcelo, Joy Eslava or Capital were and still are temples of genre mythology, and I’ve seen go-go artists like Sexual Unicorn and Rafael Alberti chatting about poetry in the back bar.
Because these clubs had a lot of bars and they were going to start having some fun risks and some risk fun between the bars. Discos in Madrid are where several generations gather on the same Saturday, but discos are above all a habit of young people, a custom of ordering a cubata by those who have already seen a lot or too much, and by those who flaunt all their surprises.
This city has always had that talent. As if bringing together strangers and far-flung people and having them dance together for a few minutes was enough to help them understand each other. Sometimes that’s enough. Today, to celebrate a discotheque, or rather to celebrate three discotheques, is to raise the bow of allegiance to the mayor, to the city, in a nod to the traditional phrase, “I was born in dance.”
Those who often jog in Capital, Joy and Pacha know that the evenings were often resolved at discos. Before cell phones, it was the joy of possibility. There was even a journey into instinct, desire, and love. There it is. Let’s see if Teatro Barceló will reopen soon.
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