Chaos at Marc Anthony's concert at Ifema: hundreds of people miss the first part due to queues

"A real chaos."

This is how Carmen Vizoso, 25, describes the situation, who has waited more than an hour in line for the concert that the artist Marc Anthony celebrates at the Ifema fairgrounds in Madrid on Tuesday night.

"No one has given us an explanation," she says by phone.

“They have divided us by sectors.

I am in sector C ―the cheapest―.

We have had to stop so that no one runs over us.

No one from the organization has told us anything.

No one.

The organization is lousy, ”she laments.

She is not the only assistant who has shown her complaints.

Hundreds and hundreds of people have accessed up to an hour late to the concert of the king of salsa due to crowds at one of the entrances.

A spokesperson for the fair institution, which is not the promoter of the event, acknowledges EL PAÍS "failures" in the organization.

Other fans speak of eternal traffic jams by car to access the car parks and of bad sound and poor visibility.

Hundreds of people, in line for the concert.

"I have arrived early," Montse Caballé, 32, also explains by phone.

“We got in line at nine at night.

We also had Gate C. The organization has been fatal.

We are lying on the street."

A testimony that also corroborates Verónica Gómez, 51: “I come from Cantabria to see the concert.

We have arrived on time.

They told us to follow the line.

We've been going around and around for three kilometers.

The police have had to intervene.

The concert has started and here there are thousands of people lining up.

Nobody tells us anything.

There is no one here.

It is a concert that moves thousands of people”.

Anthony, at one point in his performance.

Louis Sevillano

Anthony performing one of the songs from his tour with his 'Pa'lla voy' tour.Luis Sevillano

The soccer player Sergio Ramos and his wife, Pilar Rubio, in the 'backstage'.Luis Sevillano

The American singer, at the Ifema fairgrounds in Madrid. Luis Sevillano

Moment of the performance of the American singer. Luis Sevillano

Anthony, during the concert.Luis Sevillano

The organization of the event -J&J, @ Live Nation and Planet Events- ensures that "the reason why access has been delayed is because most of the public has arrived at the last minute, despite the fact that the opening hours of doors (7:30 p.m.

—advance entry—, 8:00 p.m. general opening) was indicated at the entrance and announced on the official networks”.

In addition, in the face of the accusations of some attendees harmed by the incident, they have clarified that 22,959 people have accessed the venue, "well below" the license they have been granted.

#marcanthony thousands of people outside @IFEMA to see @MarcAnthony at 10:00 p.m., whom we are waiting for after two years and neither the organization nor the artist have the decency to delay the start for an hour.

22.35 and we're still lining up.

pic.twitter.com/x18V4Mj1BG

– JorgeIglesiasManzano (@IglesiasManzano) June 21, 2022

The Puerto Rican artist's concert has started about 30 minutes late to try to solve the ticket problems.

Once started, mainly sector C has taken about 30 minutes to access the site.

Those affected, once inside, lamented that other accesses that were more free had not been enabled, as well as the lack of visibility of the stage.

During much of the concert, the last sectors have not stopped chanting “scam, scam” and “out, out”.

Begoña Blanco, who comes with a group of 15 people, asserts that she will claim the refund of the cost of the ticket, 65 euros.

The concert has finished after twelve o'clock at night and the exit has been carried out without incident.

“I've seen a lot of chaos in concert organizations, but none as crazy as this one from Marc Anthony.

Forty-five minutes just to get to the end of the queue for zone C”, says music chronicler Víctor Lenore on his Twitter profile.

“Shameful about the Marc Anthony concert, 3km queues, 1 access for 12,000 people, a concert that should have started”, complains the journalist Candela Salvador on Twitter, where the images and videos of long waits before the tickets and the massive withdrawal before completion.

Madrid is Marc Anthony's third stop in Spain after Santiago de Compostela and Barcelona, ​​where there were no problems, except for some "specific" incidents in the exchange of tickets purchased in 2019. This tour, which was first announced as

and later as

Tour , had to be postponed due to the pandemic and has landed in Spain two years later as

.

The Latin artist will be in Seville on June 23 and will tour eight other Spanish cities until ending on July 8 in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.

The performance of 'El skinny de oro'

More than 20,000 people waited for Marc Anthony to go on stage.

DJ Óscar Martínez, in charge of entertaining the public, who was entering little by little from half past seven in the evening, released some last songs at ten at night.

He had already said goodbye, but they gave him an order on the same stage to continue a little longer.

At almost half past ten,

the king of salsa

appeared after a medley of some of his most commercial hits, including collaborations such as

, with Gente de Zona.

He began with

one of his most recognized salsa songs, and then he sang

While on the outskirts the complaints were unleashed upon hearing the first chords and not being able to enter, the thousands of fans who crowded inside broke into a dance.

"He seems like a piece of artist to me, if you like salsa, it's a classic," commented Josué Navarro before the start, who attended the concert with his partner, Carmen García.

“I have the memory of him from the times of Celia Cruz, I started to like him there and I have gone to more concerts”, he commented.

Marina Medina was accompanied by her grandmother, Guillermina Luyo, an 86-year-old Peruvian.

"She's been waiting three years and now she can't see well in one eye, and she doesn't listen much either, but she's very excited," says Medina, who also confesses to being a follower of the artist.

"I've grown up with him."

Between song pairs there was a short break, the one in which the singers usually take the opportunity to talk to the public.

The Puerto Rican did not talk almost at all and that silence did not seem to please the attendees, who commented on the slowness that the show gained with those fades to black to which they were subjected.

He also did not like that on certain occasions his voice was lost, yes, with each new song an explosion of euphoria arose that seemed to reconcile him with the public.

He reviewed his greatest hits and some of the latest songs from his album, with the same title as the tour.

She performed for an hour and a half, danced a lot, spoke little, played the drums and brought soccer player Sergio Ramos on stage.

Marc Anthony, winner of three Grammys, nine Latin Grammys and holder of a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, left the audience torn between admiration and disappointment for a show they wanted more of.

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