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Mad Cool kicks off in Villaverde with 55,000 attendees and neighbourhood tension
Mad Cool returns to Iberdrola Music with up to 55,000 attendees each day and a week that will disrupt the routine in the south of Madrid. The festival boosts the city's cultural calendar, but also brings renewed complaints from residents of Villaverde y Getafe about noise, road closures, traffic, and difficulties getting rest.
The venue is already preparing for one of its major events of the year, with workers putting the finishing touches to installations and sound checks under way. For the public, there will be four days of concerts and major international names. For those living nearby, the concern is different: how the festival will affect their nights, their journeys and normal access to their streets.
The Stop Festivales Villaverde Platform argues that the measures announced do not solve the underlying problem. According to residents, mobility arrangements are designed above all for attendees, while nearby neighbourhoods continue to bear the noise, congested streets and a sense of losing control over their surroundings.
The discontent is not limited to Mad Cool. The venue has become one of Madrid’s major hubs for large-scale events and the calendar will remain full, with events such as Shakira’s residency in September. In Getafe, mayor Sara Hernández has called for greater coordination to guarantee mobility, safety and residents’ rest.
The complaints focus on very specific problems: lack of parking, traffic closures, difficulties getting home and noise levels which, according to residents, have reached residential areas several hundred metres from the venue at other editions. The platform maintains that large events have gone from around ten to more than twenty a year.
The conflict also has a judicial dimension. Madrid’s Investigating Court number 34 has opened oral proceedings against the festival’s administrator and promoter for an alleged environmental offence related to the noise levels recorded in 2023. The Public Prosecutor’s Office is seeking two years’ imprisonment and a fine for the company.
Madrid City Council says that there will be noise measurements this year, as in previous editions. The organisers defend that they have introduced improvements and point to a mobility plan worth more than €540,000, with shuttle services to the centre and an extension of Cercanías services until 3:30 in the morning to make it easier to leave the venue.
Mad Cool week lays bare an increasingly visible tension in Madrid: how to fit major festivals into neighbourhoods where people work, sleep and get around every day. The music will attract thousands of people, but the real test will be outside the venue, on the streets of Villaverde and Getafe when the concerts end.