‘Our first time in Europe’: Primavera Sound draws crowds of foreigners to Barcelona

As one of the biggest music festivals in the world, Primavera Sound is drawing crowds of foreign tourists to Barcelona, a city hardly unacquainted with international visitors, for its 2023 edition.

On the second big night of the festival on Friday, headliners Depeche Mode, Kendrick Lamar, and Fred again.. were be among the artists performing.

For many foreigners, the current edition of the festival will be their first time visiting the city—and for some, the first time traveling to Europe altogether.

“We’d never been to Europe before, it’s our first time leaving the continental United States,” festival-goer Savannah told Catalan News. 

Traveling to Europe for her graduation trip, Savannah said the line-up was one of the key reasons why she decided to come to the festival.  “We really wanted to come to Primavera Sound, they have really good music here, a big conglomeration of everyone we like, and Barcelona is really cool,” she said.

With the 2023 edition of the festival well underway, organizers are expecting around 70,000 people every night.

Last year’s edition marked the festival’s attendance record, with nearly half a million people across two consecutive weekends.

According to festival organizers, 65% of all attendees were foreigners from 139 different nationalities, with most visitors coming from European countries like the United Kingdom, Italy and Germany, but also from the United States and Mexico.

“We do a festival every year, and this year we just chose Barcelona and Primavera Sound,” said veteran festival-goer Jeff, from the United States. “We’re here all weekend, and then all next week into the weekend, just going to explore, make the best of traveling 4,000 miles.”

Organizers estimate the festival drew 349 million euros to the local economy last year, and say foreigners spent over 1,423 euros on average.

‘Just Can’t Get Enough’ 

Depeche Mode was one of the most awaited performers at the Primavera Sound in Barcelona, and the British band did not dissapoint. A long 1:45 hour concert with some of the group’s greatest hits, to finish on a high that was complicated for the next performer to compete with, rapper Kendrick Lamar.

But Depeche Mode was one of the headliners of the festival and the first group of the festival to be announced back in October 2022, months before the final lineup was revealed, and thousands of fans did not lose the opportunity to see the 1980s band.

Starting with more unique and memorable songs such as ‘My Cosmos is Mine,’ ‘Wagging Tongue,’ and ‘Walking in My Shoes,’ the band saw fans move and dance from the first song.

As the concert went underway, singer David Gahan kept moving up and down the stage in front of a giant letter M, as the old rock artists did back in the time, and continue to do up to this day with that movement that keeps fans’ eyes glued to his hips.

The show mixed those all-rock hits with an impressive lights display, but if mobile phones were mainly kept in their pockets during the majority of the songs, it was just with the first notes of ‘Enjoy the Silence’ that those phone cameras took over the view for the ones furthest away from the stage.

The group came up with the idea of presenting their latest album, ‘Memento mori,’ and they were able to. Still, fans long-awaited ‘Just Can’t Get Enough,’ the first song of the encore, which ended the concert with ‘Personal Jesus,’ which saw fans go crazy and even some screaming: “Run! I have to take a video!”