Álvaro Vivanco (Madrid, 1982), president of the Association of Special Bars of the Region of Murcia, is convinced that the fire at the Atalayas nightclubs, which left 13 dead, will go down in history as the third major blow suffered by the nightlife sector after the 2012 Halloween party at the Madrid Arena, which left five dead, and then the forced closure of the venues during and after the pandemic.
In retrospect, Vivanco cannot explain why a store in Atalayas that had an order to close a year ago continued to operate if “everyone knew it was open.” He misses him, above all, because being the owner of a bar in the center of Murcia he knows that the sector receives continuous inspections, especially regarding terrace collection times and establishment closing times. Despite the pressure, Álvaro Vivanco, as a businessman dedicated to nightlife since 2003, does not think of moving his business to Atalayas because the public that usually frequents his establishment does not travel there.
The decline of the dozen clubs that remain open in the city came around 2010 when, during the ‘brick crisis’, the authorities extended the opening hours of nightlife venues and this affected the clubs. As a result of this situation, the businessmen of Atalayas joined together to demand that the closure of the bars in the center return to what it was before the crisis, but they did not succeed.
“We are preparing for what is coming to us,” says Álvaro Vivanco, president of the nightlife venues.
Today Álvaro, Vivanco does not rule out that so many controls in the center of Murcia have ended up limiting nightlife activity in the urban area. In fact, in the last ten years only two new bars have opened in the city. “It is impossible to open more bars in Murcia,” acknowledges the businessman who has spent half of his life living and working in the regional capital. To the inspections that cocktail bars continually receive, we must also add regulations such as the ‘7 meter law’. This is an ordinance, definitively approved in 2014, that prohibits the sound of music, television or audiovisual equipment between 24 and 9 a.m. in those premises that are located in buildings where the width of the street measured from the façade where Where the bar access is located, it is less than 7 meters. And it is not the only one, there is also the rule that establishes that there must be a minimum distance of 70 to 100 meters between establishments to avoid the concentration of nightlife.
Not only as president of the Association of Special Bars, but as a businessman, Vivanco cannot conceive how it is possible that a nightclub can be open without a license with the volume of inspections they have daily. “Something must have happened.”
Inspection rounds
After the tragedy, Vivanco is convinced that one of the largest rounds of inspections of security measures in memory throughout Spain is about to begin.
Tragedy shakes the sector after the election break, after a “disastrous” summer and with Christmas at the door
And there is no doubt in his mind that what happened at Teatre and Fonda Milagros is going to hit the sector hard. «They will get nervous everywhere. When the Madrid Arena thing happened, it was noticed from Madrid to Murcia and there were venues that closed because they were looking for the ruling. “I know of a bar that was closed for ten days due to an error in the signage.” The worst thing is that the tragedy shakes the nightlife sector after the election break, after a “disastrous” summer and with the Christmas campaign at the door. “This is going to be a blow to the economy of all the families that live off nightlife” and bars like yours that close during July and August will suffer, especially, but continue to pay rent for those two months.
“It has been a tremendous tragedy,” says the representative of Murcia’s nightlife businessmen. “It is clear that the inspections have not been the same for everyone,” he insists. He has no doubt that if any premises in the center of Murcia were without a license they would have sealed it immediately. “We are preparing for what is coming to us,” he concludes.
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