Pepe Ribas recounts in his recent work Angels dancing on the head of a pin (Libros del KO, 2024), that in the libertarian Barcelona of the 70s, we knew when we were leaving the house but never when we were coming back. The legendary editor-in-chief of Ajoblanco magazine explains that “everything was improvised on the fly in a world without cell phones or social networks,” and certainly without civil liberties.
He also adds that, while in Madrid the police and Cristo Rey guerrillas brutally repressed any expression of cultural and social heterodoxy, in Barcelona they enjoyed a relative freedom that made Francoism seem a relatively distant thing, even if he was sometimes noticed.
Finally, Ribas adds that many nights of improvised revelry by this generation of “hairy hippies, beatniks and geeks” converged in the same place: the Zeleste room at number 65 on Argenteria street – then called Platería – in the Born district. 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 refuge from the crushing boot of Francoism.
Zeleste: the memory of so many occasions
Today a documentary, directed by the journalist and theater critic Albert de la Torre, and with a script by the musical mastermind of this adventure, Rafael Moll, exposes the melancholy memories of some of the protagonists of the best years of “El Zeleste” . . ”, as the place was called.
Zeleste: The results of so many opportunities (Zeleste: the memory of so many occasions) was presented at the twenty-second edition of the In-Edit musical documentary film festival in Barcelona. The film collects the testimonies of many personalities who spent many hours discussing and debating in its bar and its tables, or who made their debut on the music scene of those years, mixing jazz, progressive rock and soul , performing lounge songs or hybridizing Catalan. rumba with Caribbean salsa.
During the presentation, De la Torre explained that, for reasons of age, he did not know this environment directly, but that he knew, thanks to the records that his older brothers cherished, many groups that made their mark debut on the Zeleste stage and which gave way 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 Rafael Moll, recently deceased, who suggested that he make a documentary that would recover images from those years and combine them with the memories of some of the protagonists. The objective was to paint a portrait of an era that is now almost forgotten. Moll, producer of music for artists like 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 record publishing house and the legendary Canet Rock festival.
The Zeleste lamp as a documentary guide
A lot has 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 musician Jaume Sisa recalls in the film, ” in place of the Zeleste there.” is a clothing store [de la marca Desigual]”. And around the neighborhood, instead of long-haired demonstrators, there are tourists from all countries walking around, making themselves selfies after the Copa América hangover.
On the other hand, the lamp designed by Santiago Roqueta and Àngel Jové 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 costs 965 euros, a price that would have intimidated any of these young people immersed in underground culture.
But precisely, to illuminate the successive confessions which structure the film, mixed with images of the time, all from the RTVE archives, the filmmakers used a “Zeleste lamp”, which appears at different moments of the scene in which he is reminded of the piece. It is therefore the lamp that guides us through the different confessions of characters like the musician Jaume Sisa, the singer Manel Joseph, the poet, designer and creator of the logo of the room 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 in tune with the improvisation of the time: “I decided that the room would be called Celeste in honor of the elephant’s girlfriend Babar, and I told my son to write it down. The boy wrote it with a Z and mixing upper and lower case letters in his childish handwriting, and the designer thought it was perfect, so she barely touched it up.
Subsequently, this initial and alternative project was perfected and gave birth to a label – Edigsa – and the organization of the Canet Rock festival, but Zeleste initially constituted a meeting point for young progressives fleeing both the Francoist darkness and the elitism of the Left. Divine from the upper zone and who met at the Bocaccio nightclub.
A luminous ship in an endless night
“Zeleste was a luminous vessel in an endless night,” Sisa explains to illustrate what the piece meant to many young people. Restaurateur Ramon Parellada, another of the participants, emphasizes that they came as much to listen to music as to drink or even look for work. In this regard, in his memoirs, entitled Ghost of BarcelonaRamón from Spain explains that he sometimes spent entire afternoons and nights in the living room drinking and talking.
Rosana Torres assures in the documentary that for many people in Madrid, the place “was a place of refuge from the repression that existed in the capital”. The veteran cultural critic also highlights the quality of the alcohol served: “I can attest that Víctor Jou did not give away a pitcher. » For his part, Josep Maria Martí Font, now deceased and who, years later, would create the Tentaciones supplement for El País, underlines in front of the cameras the transversality of the public beyond social classes.
From its stage came remarkable musicians who had a national impact, such as Pau Riba, Sisa – who created his legendary Qualsevol nit can take out the sun–, Gato Pérez or Companya Elèctrica Dharma, but Zeleste was also a school for the next generation of Catalan groups, which is why it hosted the debut of Loquíllo y Los Trogloditas, Los Rebeldes, Brigton 64, Los Negativos and others proposals from the 80s.
Sabino Méndez, composer of the songs of Loquíllo and Los Trogloditas, explains in the documentary that without Zeleste, many bands that found success in the ’80s might not have been able to debut. For her part, Rosana Torres adds that the groups from the Madrid scene who met in Barcelona came to the room.
1986, year of moving and end of era
Zeleste was for more than a decade a hotbed in which Barcelona changed rapidly, so much so that the place had to face difficult problems to solve compared to its initial design, because in the mid-80s the Neighbors’ complaints about noise began to arise. wreak havoc. The hall underwent a first renovation, but this proved insufficient due to the increase in the public attending concerts and competition from newer and better equipped halls.
Finally, in 1986, Víctor Jou decided to move the venue to Poble Nou, which was then sparsely populated. Between industrial warehouses and warehouses, a much larger and better designed hall was 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 welcome the main stars of the moment.
But the creators also chose to preserve the atmosphere created since the 70s in the Born location. This was not possible, the spaces provided for this purpose turned out to be a fiasco. Society had changed, there were almost no hippies left and young alternative people were opting for their leisure activities in the establishments of the Gràcia district, with a much more popular taste.
It’s the end of an era: even if in a way the company still survives today under the name Sala Razzmatazz, the spirit of those years only survives in the memory of its protagonists, as demonstrated Zeleste: The results of so many opportunities.
Sabino Méndez illustrates this better than anyone 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: “The houses that I don’t knowEast I don’t know Cap Dret / Run, run, time may not be forever / But between the clouds and the windmills / The ports of this cabaret are finished» (Good men, women and children / Run, run, time is perhaps not eternal / Between clouds and windmills / The doors of this cabaret open).
