“Yesterday was crazy. The tickets were sold out in no time and the concert was wonderful. There is no place in Spain like Veintiuno for live lovers.” These are the words of Luis Costa, founder and manager of the secular miracle that his tiny concert hall in Huesca has become, after the group Sidonie played last Thursday at his venue.
With a capacity for just 100 people, Veintiuno has been attracting music stars to Spain's third smallest provincial capital for years, who for one day are committed to returning to their beginnings to enjoy an unrepeatable atmosphere. Less is more squared.
Iván Ferreiro, Guadalupe Plata, Mikel Erentxun and Alice Wonder have been here since the beginning of December to celebrate the venue's 13th anniversary. Sidonie did not want to be outdone and, before filling the Riviera for two days last weekend, she signed up for the party. “On December 20, Axel (drums) wrote to me because he wanted to play on January 11 at Veintiuno on the way to Madrid. This is his house, in a few hours we had everything arranged,” Costa reveals.
The road to becoming a reference room has not been easy. Coming from the world of football, Costa opened the place as a cocktail bar with two partners in 2010. Months later they decided to introduce live music, with a lot of emerging groups and some more established bands, and people started talking about them. . “They said we were going to go bankrupt, but things turned out well for us,” he recalls.
They were memorable times, in which they used ingenuity, half-truths and “a lot of magic” to convince the artists to come to the venue. For Dorian's first concert, the businessman went to pick them up in Zaragoza by car – “we had a puncture on the way to Huesca,” he laughs – and, after the gig, he drove them to Castellón. Days later, before Iván Ferreiro performed, they realized that they did not have lights and that the stage, which was mobile at the time, did not look good. “I brought an arm lamp from my father's house, we pressed the button and that's it,” he says.
The turning point came when Rockdelux magazine positioned them in 2013 as the eighth best concert hall in Spain, a ranking in which they have reached number two. “They appreciate that such big things happen in such a small room in such a small city,” summarizes the manager. That opened the doors to programming concerts in other cities (Logroño festivals) or festivals such as the Monasterio de Veruela or the Aragón Sonoro. But always with one eye on keeping the Veintiuno brand alive, where Coque Malla, Ariel Rot or Kiko Veneno among others continued to shine the stage.
In January 2020, shortly before the pandemic, they announced that they were leaving aside their role as a bar to open only when they offered concerts. Now, it is not uncommon for artists themselves to take the initiative and knock on their doors. “They go from filling the Apolo or the Winzik to brushing their fingers against those in the back row and recovering that amateur feeling that transports them to bygone times,” says Costa. This is the case of Izal, who went from playing to 8,000 spectators at the Palau Sant Jordi to a hundred in Huesca. “And yet they said in an interview that for them it was one of the most special concerts,” he points out.
On a musical level, Veintiuno maintains its essence with a program focused on indie, but without neglecting other styles (rock, pop, singer-songwriters, etc.). They have evolved from scheduling between 9 and 10 concerts a month to about 60 a year (plus as many outside). The public appreciates it by filling the dance floor event after event, often with half the capacity coming from outside.
For the next few weeks, performances by Marwan, Delafé and Sexy Zebras are already planned, which close the line-up of this tremendous 13th anniversary. Then new projects will arrive, and Costa does not hide that he would love to announce artists like Leyva, Los Planetas or Vetusta Morla, one of the few who still resist his charms. But whether they come or not, his plans involve continuing to work with responsibility and affection to take firm steps and grow little by little. “The secret is to innovate and do things that make us feel alive, if possible successfully,” he summarizes.
