- In Catalan, "hivernacle" translates as "greenhouse," which seems like a strange idea for a club setting, even in mid-winter. But there's a lot more to the term than just glass and tomatoes. Barcelona's Parc de la Ciutadella is home to a massive, vaguely sinister hivernacle that houses hundreds of exotic plants, while Poble Espanyol—a venue popular with electronic music promoters–has its own version, a vast pavilion decked out with vegetation that sits in the model village's main square during the winter.
In promoting The Hivernacle, the Poble Espanyol website suggests the venue can be used for "meetings, receptions, cocktail parties and product launches." But Barcelona being Barcelona, the most high-profile use of the space has been as a pop-up club, set up by the Brunch In The Park team, who also put up The Hivernacle's initial structure. It's a magical space for raving in, with verdant plants hanging alongside ornate chandeliers, like an overgrown Disney castle.
This year's third and final edition of Hivernacle Pop-Up Club took place on Tuesday, the day before a public holiday in Spain. The vast main room—the venue's overall capacity is 5,000—meant that the acts in there played relatively straight. Saoirse opened with an impressive set of melodic techno—think peak Mathew Jonson—that slowly built a crowd, while Gui Boratto bathed the venue in his clean, luminescent tones. It may have just been the weight of expectation but DJ Koze, who followed, was a disappointment. His selections were too conservative, as if the large space had smoothed the edges off his idiosyncrasies. Even so, the crowd loved it, especially when he played Rico Puestel's 2017 anthem "Caravel," which threatened to blow the glass off the walls.
The Hivernacle crew used Poble Espanyol club Sala Upload as a second space. It's an admirably strange venue that brought to mind The Black Lodge in Twin Peaks, thanks to low red lighting and a checked black and white floor. Rather than jazz and mumbling, though, there was deep, experimental techno, played by Rubén Seoane and Architectural. The latter, in particular, was fantastic, fiddling intensively with his mixer as he teased out a selection of dark and funky minimal techno.
That left Mind Against to close out the night in the main room. Their set of neo-trance melodies and cascading riffs tumbled off the chandeliers, putting a lid on another year of events at one of Barcelona's most intriguing and elegant venues.
Photo credit /
Astrid Bosch Miskovic