People living next to Santiago Bernabéu venue say gigs – including those by Taylor Swift – are ruining their lives and are taking action.
Although best known for the past eight decades as the home of Real Madrid, the ground, which has just undergone a five-year, €900m (£756m) refurbishment, has over the past four months been hosting a series of high-profile concerts.
If the gigs have helped put the Bernabéu on the map with visiting singers such as Taylor Swift, Luis Miguel and, for four consecutive nights this week, the Colombian star Karol G, they have driven local residents to despair. Some have taken to referring to the stadium as a torturódromo, or torture-drome.
Fed up with decibels far exceeding legal levels, fans camping out in parks, drunk people urinating in doorways and the blocking off of residential roads, an association representing those living around the Bernabéu in the Chamartín neighbourhood is taking legal action against those responsible, including Madrid city council.
“It’s just hideous – you can’t move your car, you can’t take the dog out, and you’re having to prepare yourself mentally because it’s awful,” says De Pontevès. “It also creates health problems – lots of us are suffering from more frequent headaches, stress, anxiety and depression.”
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Even just regular bars. I keep earplugs on my keychain to bring any time I go out. It’s absurd that anyone thinks this is acceptable.
I forgot mine once but happened to have two AAA batteries in my pocket. I looked weird but I can didn’t go deaf. (It was a seated event.)
Its because every fucking audio engineer the last 2 decades has fallen into the “louder trap” until the noise floor and ceiling are one in the same. Every fucking venue I’ve ever been to has always violated safe decibel levels. Always bring hearing protection these audio engineers have just been fed “louder better” for a long time.
Did anyone see Civil War in theaters? Literally the loudest movie I’ve ever seen. It was on the verge of painful. I get it, immersive war, whatever. But Jesus. Some of us would like to keep our hearing into our 40s/50s, thanks.
The last movie I went to in the theatre, I put in earplugs from the get go. I haven’t been to many movies in the theatre in decades, but I wanted to be cautious.
I could hear every sound from the movie with great clarity. Every whisper was still loud enough to bust through the earplugs. It’s just insane how loud they set it all up to be. How is that a good and attractive thing?
I do it every Christopher Nolan movie. There was an interview with him after Interstellar released and they read him some of viewer reviews. One of them was just “it’s pretty loud”, and he just laughed…
Love most of his work, but I’m not losing my hearing over it. They’re not that good.
I use hearing aids since I was a kid and have to take them off when going to the cinema in order to hear normal.