FLORIDA - THE HISTORY
In 1880, a man named José Satorres, opened the Café Josepet in a small Aragonese town called Fraga. He knew that he was breaking with centuries of family farming tradition, but he did not imagine that he was laying the first stone of a business dedicated to showing business and gradually becoming one of the leading promoters of electronic music in Spain. His tireless and visionary spirit marked a way of working that inspired everyone around him and established several families and generations' futures under a single name: the Arnau family.
AS FAMILIES GREW, THE BUSINESS ALSO DID.
The Café Josepet was transformed into the Café Victoria by Antonio Durán, married to Maria Vilar, the founder's granddaughter, later converted into theatre and cinema, first silent and later also open-air cinema.
The small and agricultural Fraga, thanks to the Satorres, Durán and Arnau families, little by little began to make a name for itself as a music and entertainment centre and became a pole of attraction for people who came from far away.
THE VICTORIA DE LOS DURÁN CINEMA WAS ADDED ...
In the 1940s, the Arnau Cinema Florida has more than 1,500 seats and the latest sound technologies. A large stage of more than 150 square meters allowed the Arnau brothers to combine the best of the golden age of Hollywood cinema with great theatrical performances and musical magazines and already, at that time, splendid musicals that competed in excellence and exuberance with those. Others represented in the Parallel Barcelonés or Madrid's Gran Vía. A little later, two other spaces, already more dedicated to dance music, joined the Florida Garden Terrace and the Florida Saloon, where the most brilliant figures of light song and the most fantastic orchestras of the time paraded. The Florida and Arnau brand gradually became a mecca for music and nightlife in the strict and repressive Spanish society.
IN 1948 JUAN ARNAU CABASES,
Great-grandfather of the current managers of the brand, he convinces the great Catalan conductor Javier Cugat to perform in his brand-new Florida Hall, recently opened. Javier Cugat was succeeding in the city of Las Vegas with his wife, the dancer Abelain.
Cugat was in charge of inaugurating the first Cesar Palace Casino. Padri Juan was so persevering that he enthused the Catalan musician born in Figueras and performed in Fraga shortly after.
Unfortunately, Juan Arnau died one day before his excellent performance on the Fragatino stage and Cugat, moved by such an outcome, dedicated a few minutes of silence to him, but the show did not stop. The show had to go on.
In the following decades, this club would first become one of the first discotheques of the time. In 1973 Javier Regás decorated the mythical Florida Fraga for the Arnau family. Three years later, a raging fire destroyed it, and it was rebuilt identically by the Arnau brothers within 30 days. The colors of the room change from reddish and pink to ocher and brown and the hanging cloverleaf elements to polygonal elements.
A DECADE LATER, REGAS,
in those days working as a hippie in Goa (India), he did it again; creates for the Fraga brothers the legendary Florida 135 inaugurated in 1985 an authentic Bronx street in the middle of the city of Fraga, all inspired by the films Blade Runner and West Side Story.
To continue evolving and innovating in line with the changing musical trends until it becomes a fundamental destination for Spanish electronic music.
Javier placed a large booth in the central part of the stage in those years, occupying almost all of it as if he guessed five years before that the figure of the deejay would soon be the centre of the universe and the booth the altar where he would officiate all his sessions.
AND NOW THE GREAT STORY OF THE ROOM BEGINS.
At first under the motto Móntatelo en Florida 135, then - from the musical orientation of the great Philippe Corti del Papagayo de Saint Tropez - with the name of Hysteria to make way for the House and Acid House of the late eighties with the invaluable help of the tremendous public relations Juanjo Rodriguez.
The EARLY 90s
Florida joins the well-known Valencian Cod Route with its Florida 135 Club Sound that would give way years later to the Florida 135 Tendenze Club with Front 242 and Laurent Garnier inaugurating these new electronic stages of the club. Then the Cathedral would come, and now the Florida 135 without more.
JOURNEY THROUGH THE MUSIC OF THESE THREE DECADES
From disco music, the Madrid scene with the most representative pop groups of the decade, singer-songwriters and soloists of the transaction, the great dance hits of all time, house, acid-house, the machine, the cod and now for ending the most underground and universal electronic music.
IT WAS PRECISELY THIS VISIONARY INSANITY WITH ITS BEGINNINGS AT THE CAFE JOSEPET IN 1880,
which led the Arnau family two decades ago. In 1992, it was the first under the Monegros Party brand. It changes to Monegros Desert Rave, to become years later the legendary Groove Parade. Then, Monegros Desert Festival mounted a rave without permission and was completely illegal in the middle of the Monegros desert, near Fraga on that farm one day owned by Josepet Satorres and that he lost recovered in a poker game, the Finca de Las Peñetas.
There, in the game of Las Menorcas Monegrinas, a rave was held on that Saturday, July 22, 1992, that created a musical culture and that today we celebrate and remember with the now legendary Monegros Desert Festival, the largest electronic music festival held in Spain. Of a single day duration.
THIS EVOLUTION ALSO CONTAINED THE INVENTION AND EXPLORATION OF OTHER MUSICAL TRENDS, SUCH AS THE NOW-FAMOUS ROW, SO BAPTIZED BY RICART ROBLES, OWNER AND IDEOLOGIST OF THE FAMOUS SONAR.
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1999
Started as an urban club on Calle Rosellón in Barcelona, in what was the famous Nick Havanna by Javier de las Muelas.
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2008
Row moves to the farmhouse of Chus Pereda, legendary Barcelona C.F. Under the brand name ROW14.
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2010
Current Elrow and its Row Parties. With its epicentre in the Viladecans room next to Barcelona's El Prat Airport, they held at the Space in Ibiza and the middle of the World and are synonymous with fun, madness, originality and the best electronic music parties of the moment.
IN 2012 JUAN ARNAU IBARZ,
the man who had dedicated his entire life to entertainment and dance, considered within the scene as the great electronic entrepreneur, called by all his clients as "Grandpa Techno", leaves us forever after a short illness.
And he does it on a Saturday in any September, while his and his friends Ben Sims and Carl Cox are officiating sessions in his beloved Florida and his not so far away Row 14 Barcelonés.
In 2013 the family embarked on another adventure in the city of Barcelona. In October of that year, together with other partners, they opened the Ker club, which later became an itinerant brand in 2015, intending to promote them even more underground and unknown side of dance music.
"We invite you to be part of this endearing history and of our family ... to share our brand and grow with us because Los Arnau consider our clients, not only our friends, but part of our family, our partners. Together we are going to have fun, to do new projects, to evolve together, to make our clients have a great time as we have always done. Always grateful. It has been an honor for us to have your collaboration, trust and your support".
— Los Arnau