Pepe Ribas tells in his recent work Angels dancing on the head of a pin (Libros del KO, 2024), that in the libertarian Barcelona of the 70s you knew when you left home but never when you returned. The legendary editor of Ajoblanco magazine explains that “everything was improvised on the fly in a world without mobile phones or social networks,” and certainly without civil liberties.
He also adds that, while in Madrid the police and the Cristo Rey guerrillas brutally repressed any expression of cultural and social heterodoxy, in Barcelona they enjoyed a relative freedom that made Francoism seem like a relatively distant thing, although from time to time was noticed.
Finally, Ribas adds that many nights of improvised revelry of that generation of “hairy hippies, beatniks and geeks” converged in the same place: the Zeleste room at number 65 Argenteria Street – then called Platería – in the Born neighborhood. . In this way, the place was the agora not only of the local underground, but also of restless people from all over the State who needed a refuge from the overwhelming boot of Francoism.
Zeleste: the memory of so many occasions
Now, a documentary, directed by the journalist and theater critic Albert de la Torre, and with a script by the musical brain of that adventure, Rafael Moll, exposes the melancholic memories of some of the protagonists of the best years of “el Zeleste”. ”, as the place was known.
Zeleste: The record of so many occasions (Zeleste: the memory of so many occasions) has been presented at the twenty-second edition of the In-Edit musical documentary film festival in Barcelona. The film collects the testimonies of numerous personalities who either spent many hours chatting and debating at its bar and tables, or debuted on the music scene of those years, whether mixing jazz, progressive rock and soul, or performing dance songs. lounge or hybridizing Catalan rumba with Caribbean salsa.
During the presentation, De la Torre explained that, for reasons of age, he did not know that environment directly, but he did, thanks to the records that his older brothers treasured, many of the bands that debuted on the Zeleste stage and that gave place to what was called the “Laietana wave”. De la Torre cited Màquina!, Max Sunyer, Oriol Tramvia, Sisa, Pau Riba, La Voss del Trópico, La orchestra Platería, Mirasol Colores and Gato Pérez, among others.
He also recalled that it was the recently deceased Rafael Moll who suggested he make a documentary that would recover images from those years and combine them with the memories of some of the protagonists. The goal was to paint a portrait of an era that today has been almost forgotten. Moll, music producer of artists such as Albert Pla and Serrat and friend of Zeleste founder Víctor Jou, was one of the pillars on which not only the venue’s programming was based, but also a subsequent record publishing company and the legendary Canet Rock festival.
The Zeleste lamp as a documentary guide
Many things have changed in Barcelona since the Zeleste room was born in 1973 on the street then called Platería, a stone’s throw from the Santa Maria del Mar cathedral. Today, as the musician Jaume Sisa remembers in the film, “instead of the Zeleste there is a clothing store [de la marca Desigual]”. And around the area, instead of long-haired protesters, tourists from all countries wander around, making themselves selfies after the hangover of the Copa América.
On the other hand, the lamp that Santiago Roqueta and Àngel Jové designed in 1969 – and which ended up being called Zeleste because the room used it to illuminate the intimacy of the tables – was recovered in 2021 by the Santa & Cole brand, which sells it for 965 euros, a price that would have intimidated any of those young people immersed in underground culture.
But, precisely, to illuminate the successive confessions that structure the film, mixed with images of the time, all of them from the RTVE archive, the filmmakers have used a “Zeleste lamp”, which appears at different points in the scene in which it is recalled. the room. It is, therefore, the lamp that guides us through the different confessions of characters such as the musician Jaume Sisa, the singer Manel Joseph, the poet, designer and creator of the hall’s logo Silvia Gubern, the designer Claret Serrahima or the journalist from El País Rosana Torres among many others.
Gubern explains in the documentary the anecdote of the creation of the logo, very much in tune with the improvisation of those days: “I decided that the room would be called Celeste in honor of the girlfriend of the elephant Babar, and I told my son to write it” . The boy wrote it with Z, and mixing uppercase and lowercase letters in his childish handwriting, and the designer thought it was perfect, so she barely touched it up.
Subsequently, that initial and alternative project was perfected and gave rise to a record label – Edigsa – and the organization of the Canet Rock festival, but initially Zeleste constituted a meeting point for young progressives who were fleeing both Franco’s darkness and the elitism of the Gauche Divine from the upper area and who met at the Bocaccio nightclub.
A luminous ship in an endless night
“Zeleste was a luminous ship in an endless night,” says Sisa to illustrate what the room meant to many young people. Restaurateur Ramon Parellada, another of the participants, highlights that they came to listen to music as well as to drink or even to look for work. In this regard, in his memoirs, titled Barcelona ghostRamón from Spain explains that sometimes he spent entire afternoons and nights in the living room drinking and chatting.
Rosana Torres assures in the documentary that for many people in Madrid the place “was a place to take refuge from the repression that existed in the capital.” The veteran cultural critic also highlights the quality of the alcohol that was served: “I can attest that Víctor Jou did not give a jug.” For his part, Josep Maria Martí Font, now deceased and who years later would create the Tentaciones supplement for El País, highlights before the cameras the transversality of the public beyond social classes.
Notable musicians emerged from its stage who had national repercussions, such as Pau Riba, Sisa – who premiered there his legendary Qualsevol nit can sortir the sun–, Gato Pérez or Companya Elèctrica Dharma, but Zeleste was also a school for the next generation of Catalan bands, so it hosted the debuts of Loquíllo y Los Trogloditas, Los Rebeldes, Brigton 64, Los Negativos and other eighties proposals.
Sabino Méndez, composer of the songs by Loquíllo and Los Trogloditas, explains in the documentary that without Zeleste many of the bands that were successful in the 80s might not have been able to debut. For her part, Rosana Torres adds that the groups from the Madrid scene that ended up in Barcelona came to the room.
1986, year of move and end of era
Zeleste was a hotbed for more than a decade in which Barcelona changed rapidly, so much so that the place had to face problems that were difficult to solve with respect to its initial design, since in the mid-80s, neighborhood complaints about noise began to take their toll. The venue underwent a first renovation, but it was insufficient due to the increase in audiences attending concerts and the competition from newer, better-equipped venues.
Finally, in 1986, Víctor Jou decided to move the room to the then sparsely populated Poble Nou. Between industrial warehouses and warehouses, a much larger and better-designed hall is designed for concerts with a larger audience at a time when the use of stadiums was not yet very popular. Thus, the new Zeleste was able to host the main stars of the moment.
However, the creators had also opted to preserve the atmosphere that had been created since the 70s in the Born location. It was not possible, the spaces designed for this purpose turned out to be a fiasco. Society had changed, there were hardly any hippies left and the alternative young people opted for their leisure time in the establishments in the Gràcia neighborhood, with a much more popular flavor.
It was the end of an era: although in some way the business still survives today under the name of Sala Razzmatazz, the spirit of those years only survives in the memory of its protagonists, as demonstrated Zeleste: The record of so many occasions.
Sabino Méndez illustrates this, better than anyone else in the documentary, when he assures that the best definition of what Zeleste was are the verses that Sisa composed for his song. The galactic cabaret: “Homes i donis i nens del cap dret / Run, run, the weather may not be eternal / But between the clouds and the windmills / The ports of this cabaret are over” (Good men and women and children / Run, run, time may not be eternal / Between clouds and windmills / The doors of this cabaret open).
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