Headphones at Gay Pride
The protests, the stalled negotiations and the threats of cancellation are over. Madrid will have its Gay Pride celebrations after all, there will be an outdoor stage in Chueca square, and the city will even pay for it. In return, festival organizers have agreed to eliminate the noise by holding “silent” concerts that can only be heard with headphones.
A last-minute meeting between the organizers, on one side, and Mayor Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón and Environment Commissioner Ana Botella on the other, finally found a fair solution to a stumbling block that had kept negotiations deadlocked for over two weeks: excessive noise.
Out of deference for a street celebration that attracts tens of thousands of people to the city center in early July every year, local authorities had raised its own outdoor noise limits at four festival hotspots: Plaza del Rey, Calle Pelayo, Plaza de Callao and Plaza de España. Although the city code says that noise may not exceed 45 decibels between 11pm and 7am, exceptions can be made, and city leaders placed the ceiling at 90 decibels at these squares between 11pm and 2:30am from Thursday June 29 through Saturday, July 2.
The problem was that Plaza de Chueca, the most symbolic city landmark for the gay pride movement, was left out of this exception. The city ordinance does not permit altering the noise limits if there is a health center or a senior residence within 150 meters of the site – which there is. Organizers complained that in 2010 they already “lost” another square, Vázquez de Mella, for the same reasons (there is a senior residence nearby) and because of continued noise complaints by local residents.
Although a group of festival supporters staged protests over the city’s decision to keep noise down at Chueca square, and even followed the mayor to his home one evening to intimidate him, their actions were useless. Meanwhile, a neighborhood association made sure that the city did not relent on the noise issue, and even took their case to court to ensure full compliance with the law.
So, in the end, the festival gets to keep Chueca, but they can only program “silent sessions” there, which will be heard on the frequency of a radio station called Loca FM, and on the internet. Only people with headphones connected to a radio transistor or a cellphone (using an application available for iPhones, Androids and Blackberries) will be able to pick up on this DJ music. The idea came from festival organizers as a way to overcome their clashes with the residents. As a reward, the city promised to put up money for the initiative.
“We didn’t want to lose the square, so we came up with the solution ourselves,” said Antonio Poveda, president of the Federation of Lesbians, Gays, Transexuals and Bisexuals.
Although any headphones will do, organizers are racing to find a sponsor to provide them to patrons, similar to the practice in high-speed trains and airplanes, said Juan Carlos Alonso, president of the Association of Gay and Lesbian Business Owners.
via ELPAÍS.com.
