jambinai – bolachas.org

It doesn’t matter how conservative or liberal you are: people are naturally resistant to change, especially if the previous form of what’s changing was so dear to them. We get it: “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Judging by the tone and content of most comments we can find online about this year’s Primavera lineup, both in Porto and Barcelona, folks ain’t happy about “the new normal”. Yes, some of the biggest pop artists in the planet have claimed most of the spots with the big font in it. Yes, there’s a shortage of loud, extreme music we often found at the long gone ATP stage, and every year there are less and less historical, cult indie rock bands reforming for a Primavera performance. But, other than that – tiny specks on a lineup of over 120 bands in Barcelona and over 60 in Porto – has it really changed that much? Is the Primavera DNA gone? (Was there really a “Primavera DNA” to begin with?)

Three days, a boat, water. This is a big part of what we already knew about this year’s edition of Festival Sinsal, a small festival which takes place every summer in the even smaller archipelago of San Simón, a couple of islets in the middle of the Ría de Vigo only accessible by boat. The lineup (which is practically the same on the two days of the festival) is unknown to the visitors until the first boat arrives in the island. The fact that Saturday’s tickets sold out some days before the festival hints at the trust that festivalgoers have on the organizers of the festival, the kind people at Sinsal, an organization that has put out dozens of concerts in Galicia (northwestern Spain) during the past eleven years.