The hundred-year-old La Paloma dance corridor returns after a 16-year hiatus. The homeowners, Mercè March and her son Pau Soler, return the splendor to the place for this New Year’s Eve night time and put together the inauguration of the observe for February 2023, coinciding with Carnival. The venue was closed in 2007 by the Barcelona City Council, ruled by Jordi Hereu, on account of noise issues at night time.
The occasion will begin at 12:30 a.m. with stay music from the band Carlitos Sarduy & Groove Messengers, Marinah from Ojos de Brujo, Sonido Tupinamba and DJ Guille de Juan and Virginie. They offered a lot of the tickets on-line and on Friday afternoon they opened the ticket places of work for the general public preferring to purchase their place the old school means: “We are very pleased with the reception. Every day we obtain calls from clients excited concerning the information. It’s very thrilling,” explains Mercè March, proprietor of the room, to NIUS.
La Paloma is the oldest dance corridor in Europe. It opened in 1903. Its Versailles-esque ornament makes it a novel place, which has hosted numerous filming, additionally throughout its closure. It has been tough to maintain it afloat, acknowledges the proprietor, they usually have lately carried out the works required by the town council for its opening. Now nostalgia has became nerves and the thrill of his return to the Barcelona leisure map.
Orchestra of La Paloma within the presidential field niusdiario.es
The observe of “life itself”
Mercè March fell in love with the room when she entered the room within the Nineteen Sixties: “I met my husband on the Faculty of Law. One day he took me to a dance venue that his household had in Chinatown (Raval) I went in and was ecstatic with that ornament and its folks. The clue was a Fellini movie with all its characters! It was life itself!”, she recollects.
Ramon Daura opened the ballroom with a way more austere ornament than the present one. After a visit to Paris, he commissioned the brand new set with bins, garlands, work from the artisan Manel Mestres and the ceiling materials from the set designers of the Liceu. In 1915 they accomplished the work with a big lamp on the ceiling that is still to at the present time. Artists such because the French dancer Josephine Baker handed via the observe.
The roaring 20s and 30s additionally arrived in Barcelona and girls and boys approached the enjoyable dance corridor with none disgrace: “Dancing societies existed at the moment and La Paloma had its members” explains Mercè. “The ceiling lamp would go down with a bit motor to announce the closing time. Then the orchestra would play three tangos and everybody would fall asleep”, she explains.
The Civil War used the room as a taking pictures gallery. The Franco regime allowed the reopening of “Uncle Ramon’s” premises, as Mercè recollects, who needed to handle to make sure decency and order: “There was a person in black with a cane who was known as ‘morality’. When a The couple would get too shut, get in entrance and hit the bottom with their keep on with separate them. At the third discover, they’d be expelled for some time,” he explains.
Dancing in La Paloma through the 50s niusdiario.es
More Paloma and fewer drugs for despair
Mercè retains in her reminiscence all of the tales that her husband’s uncle advised her. But they hardly preserve photographs of the time: “It was a dance corridor in Chinatown, everybody wished to come back however it was not glamorous. The household was not conscious of its legacy,” she justifies.
The couple inherited the room in 1978. Fun was assured: “All sorts of individuals got here, humble from the neighborhood and from excessive society after they left the Liceu. A famend dermatologist consulted in one of many bins on Thursday nights, throughout college events. He stated it was helpful for him to observe,” he recollects. “A psychiatrist from Vall d’Hebron prescribed his sufferers extra visits to the ward and fewer drugs for his or her illnesses,” she says proudly.
New Year’s Eve celebration shortly earlier than closing in 2006niusdiario.es
If one thing characterizes La Paloma, it’s that it saved its band of musicians till the tip, when it was not in trend. And her afternoon dances, the one in all her older shoppers who gave her a brand new fame and a complete forged of characters. Some acquired the nickname of her, put by the remainder of the shoppers.
A gallery of emblematic characters
Mercè remembers the ‘Tigre’, a “brief man wearing white with a shawl, who solely wished to bounce with youthful girls”, he says. The observe made a hall for him and applauded him “whereas he walked round waving his scarf.” The ‘Mayoress’ distributed the seats for the brand new shoppers, “she defended that the veterans deserved to be nearer to the orchestra”, she explains. The ‘Artist’, a former refrain woman from the Mill, arrived with a bag of clothes to vary between songs: “She danced alone in entrance of the stage. She did not need a associate as a result of she stated that nobody danced like her,” she recollects.
The grapes, on New Year’s Eve, have been additionally eaten within the eating room: “Customers arrived earlier than 12 and we made the chimes right here. They cherished occasion favors and throwing noisemakers. Over the years, the customized modified, they ate the grapes at dwelling and They would come out later,” he explains.
La Paloma clothes up this Saturday with a capability of as much as 1,000 folks. The oldest consumer already has her ticket: “A 103-year-old girl who has been coming to bounce since she was 18. She advised me that it is a good factor we opened as a result of she shall be in time to return. She desires us to save lots of her typical field,” she recollects.