Sónar 2025 – 12, 13 and 14 June 2025 (Barcelona)

It must be acknowledged that a long debate was had among the people who are part of the Indieófilo project before these lines were written.

Amidst the ongoing debate in the mainstream press regarding the presence of the pro-Israeli investment firm KKR at the Catalan festival, exacerbated by the swift responses of certain artists who were part of the Sónar 2025 lineup, as well as the organisation’s response, the question of whether Indieófilo should cover the festival was no longer ignored, instead sparking hundreds of messages on the WhatsApp group.

With some editors advocating an absolute boycott and others defending all the projects in which Sónar collaborates within Catalan and Barcelona society (in particular Sonar+D), as well as those in favour of covering the event to give visibility to artists who had already shown their support for the BDS movement, we finally decided to allow individuals within the project to express themselves as they saw fit.

In terms of attendance numbers, the Barcelona festival has not experienced a downturn. In fact, it reached a record attendance of 16,000 people over the three days of the festival. The artistic programme, which clearly committed to electronic and urban music while showcasing local talent, has been successful and seems to have left the big names of other styles that characterised the pandemic era behind.

With regard to the artists’ stance on the Palestinian cause, we cannot deny that there were far fewer than expected, most of them coming from Spanish artists, and the tepidity of the big international headliners was surprisingly surprising.. Alizzz, Maria Arnal or Mushkaa delivered clear messages via projections on the screens. Among the international artists, there were cases such as that of the Scottish artist Sarra Wild, who explained in a presentation why she had participated in Sónar 2025 (boycotting a festival means boycotting its workers and the working class), and those of NOIA and Adrian Sherwood, as well as the groundbreaking show by the Brazilian group Teto Preto, who wore T-shirts and pro-Palestinian flags.

Photo gallery by Meritxell Rosell (Meritxula on Instagram) for Indieófilo. All rights reserved. Unauthorised use or modification of the images in whole or in part is not allowed.