The pyromusical, dedicated this year to commemorating the 30th anniversary of the Sónar festival, dismissed a new edition of the Mercè festivities last night. The final show, which this time could not be accompanied by the evolutions of the Magic Fountain of Montjuïc, disabled by the drought, was one of the most followed events of the four-day celebrations that this year, unlike many other years, they have benefited from the good weather, which has invited thousands of people to go out to enjoy the Sarau. On the negative balance, as is also unfortunately the tradition, some incidents – of little relevance compared to those of the 2022 edition – which tend to be concentrated around the stages with the largest influx of people.
The Urban Guard and the Mossos d'Esquadra again had extra work on Sunday night, the last of the big concerts in the festive program. The police forces arrested around 14 people, nine of them in the vicinity of the University Area, where this year's musical events with the largest crowd have taken place, which in previous editions of the Mercè took place in the Maria Cristina avenue. In any case, in this first major holiday presided over by the new mayor, the socialist Jaume Collboni, the City Council highlighted the absence of serious incidents.
One of the most successful shows this year, due to the novelty factor it represented, was the one starring 200 perfectly synchronized drones in the sky of Barcelona, in front of the beach, on Sunday night, which gathered around 80,000 attendees. On the same Sunday night, the concerts at the Menéndez y Pelayo stage, in the University Area, were attended by around 20,000 people, and 8,000 more went to the Moll de la Fusta.
A relevant fact of the festivities has been the massive use of public transport, and specifically the metro. On Sunday alone, 1,263,000 trips were taken by suburban transport, 19.5% more than on the same day of the 2019 holiday.
