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We arrived in Barcelona a few days ahead of Primavera, to give us a chance to see the sights and relax a little. It’s a compact city, although larger than I thought it would be, with a wide variety of flavours to the various districts. The weather has been variable, but never unpleasant.

It is a very clean city, they seem to constantly empty the bins on a daily cycle, and there are recycling stations everywhere. The architecture is wonderful. Not just the Gaudi, which is as astonishing as you’d expect, but there’s an adventurous sense to public space everywhere, interesting modern building nestling up against 14th century alleyways, and giant lumps of sculpture sprouting everywhere, in a manner you only rarely see in conservative old Britain.

We’ve mostly been rehearsing our body clocks for the ever so slightly mental 5pm-5am Primavera schedule, and so we’ve not done so much cultural sightseeing, or eating out. I figured it can wait until the now inevitable follow-up visit.

Appearing as part of Dot to Dot , an excellent city-wide music hullaballoo, spanning multiple venues. As the schedule didn’t really sit very comfortably with my travel plans, flying out to Barcelona the next morning, I didn’t really get a chance to see many sets, just some of Fight like Apes ( excellent ), Montreal’s We are Wolves ( good stage moves ), Two Gallants ( dull enough to make me wander away and play Sonic the Hedgehog tennis on a nearby X-Box demo machine. Two thumbs up for Sonic Tennis, though ).

In fairness, the latter looked like they might be quite interesting, given enough familiarity with the material, and I’m tempted to chance an album, but I wasn’t really feeling it. And the main reason I was actually in the Trinity, was to catch the headliners, Spiritualized, one of my all time favourites.

I thought they played a blinder. The Trinity is fast becoming one of my favourite Bristol venues, great sound, good bar, and it’s incredibly handy to reach on foot. And they keep booking my favourite artists.

The band were really together, there’s the welcome return of the gospel backing singers, excellent lightshow, and J. Spaceman is looking great and singing better than he ever has, at least to my ears. New album out now-ish.

It’s been a few years now since I last went to Glastonbury, and the last few summers have been festival-free for me, save for local city-wide affairs like Venn . I came very close to attending the ‘End of the Road’ festival last September, tempted by a very me-friendly line up, but it wasn’t very compatible with school term dates, and last summer’s terrible run of weather just left me procrastinating about it until it was far too late to bother.

In the U.K. there’s almost too many to choose from now, spread right across the summer, with something happening seemingly every single weekend from May to September. This means that it’s now becoming something of a stadium tour circuit, and with a depressingly production-line feel to the majority, it’s increasingly hard to differentiate them.

End of the Road didn’t seem to have as many must-see bands this year, and so my attention wandered a little further afield. A couple of years ago, I noticed the Primavera Sound festival, in Barcelona had a line up of acts very much in tune with my way of thinking. I’ve wistfully looked at it every year since then, and this time around I’ve actually decided to go.

It seems to be built around the music, with a thoughtful and genuinely alternative line up , very much my sort of thing. There’s a great mix; bands I currently like very much and would *really* like to see ( Boris , Animal Collective , Okkervil River , Prinzhorn Dance School , Six Organs of Admittance , Om ), significant ‘legacy’ acts ( Devo , Public Enemy , Dinosaur Jr. , Shellac ), critically favoured ‘name’ acts ( Portishead , Cat Power , Rufus Wainwright ), favourite acts I’ve seen before ( De La Soul , Tindersticks , British Sea Power , Explosions in the Sky ), and, perhaps a new trend, bands with amusingly rude names ( Holy Fuck! , local outfit Fuck Buttons , and the charmlessly named Pissed Jeans ). My single line up complaint is that it’s a European festival, and there’s no dEUS , even though they have a new album out to promote.

Like every festival, it’s sure to be pointless attempting to programme any kind of strict itinerary. Events will indubitably conspire to wreck it. Given my estimate of at least 70% of the acts being the sort of thing I’d go and check out if they were playing locally, I think the best policy is to be mostly be guided by serendipity. Suggestions for things to check out are welcome!

The festival site is next to the sea , and just a couple of km out of Barcelona itself. We’re going for the whole week, flying out on the 24th and returning on the 1st of June. I’ve rented an apartment, right on the waterfront in Barcelonetta , which looks like it ought to be within fair walking distance of the site. This gives us a few days preceding to acclimatise, relax and see the sights before the festival properly starts.