Reconstructing La Ruta del Bakalao with Chimo Bayo and its protagonists: "There were drugs, but I've been to weddings with more cocaine"

Behind the photos of parking lots full of cars with

exploding in their trunks and discos full of people levitating with music (and without it) there is more than a bunch of out of date people with no other function than to get high until they lose consciousness.

In the background of these images is one of the last purely national avant-gardes, the disruption of a Valencian society on the way to modernity that the 1980s proclaimed without the intellectual airs of La Movida.

Surrender to hedoni

Saint.

«

.

All societies have danced to celebrate, only here we did it every weekend.

Word of Chimo Bayo

, one of the prophets of that time.

With this declaration of intent begins the reconstruction of

The Bakalao Route

through the testimonies of those who lived and enjoyed it there and the localization team of the series

, produced by Caballo Films and which premieres this Sunday on Atresplayer Premium, which has brought electronic music back into

, many of them closed more than a decade ago.

«Finding the clubs was easy, the complex thing is to recreate a time and an environment for which there is not so much documentation.

There you have to pull from the collective memory and the people of Valencia were dedicated to doing it, ”explains Patricia Picazo, head of location for the project.

That forced the design team to get inside the still-open Spook and take it to the 80s;

, and to recreate through images the giant elephant in the NOD parking lot Because all that, today turned into fiction and a certain myth, not only existed but left a legacy that is more remembered for its abrupt end than for the cultural legacy.

But the reality is that graphic artists such as Mariscal or Paco Roca and a good handful of musical styles emerge from the design of the signs of these clubs -

either

- with which Spain could not even dream before a gang of clubs based on Valencian roads or beaches imported them.

«In Valencia all the circumstances were given: a great desire to be modern, very marked socioeconomic circumstances of progress and a series of beach clubs that were not very profitable to experiment with.

», exposes Joan Oleaque, author of the essay

and series advisor.

Some young people partying in a parking lot

MS.

The journalist Carlos Aimeur, author of

, adds some more: «I am very pragmatic.

Here there was legislation that allowed clubs without hours outside the urban area and on November days, like today, we have 24 degrees.

».

With all that, a group of people with the desire to transgress and get disco music out of the

, led by

, eternal DJ of Barraca, or

, in whose record store Zic-Zac the term bakalao was born, the seed was already planted.

The 1980s in Valencia became a continuous journey along the roads in search of electronic pleasure.

"We could equate this to the hippie movement, Woodstock or Studio 54", details the photographer and DJ Kike Jaén, who, like all those who appear in this text, coincide in "the ecstasy" of a first stage that at the beginning of the 90 dissipated between traffic accidents, overcrowding of nightclubs, news of brawls, drug trafficking and forgetfulness of music.

«

l, but here people are interested in the decade of the 80s, the decade of musical impact.

Drugs were taken, but it was a popular thing, nothing elitist, and it is good that now the entire artistic movement is contextualized, not just the sensationalist coverage, "says Joan Oleaque.

«

We would have some interest when doctoral theses are still being written on the subject and the music that was played has remained a classic”, adds Kike Jaén.

«

.

Mescaline was consumed here and when coca arrived, it was the one that ended everything.

There were many families that were devastated by this issue, but with mescaline there was a moment when you had a connection with the music, the rhythms entered your body and everything was more intense”, comments Carlos Aimeur.

But what finished off La Ruta del Bakalao is not the black image that still endures, it was massification.

"Entrepreneurs have businesses to earn money and they want to earn more and more until the magic and quality breaks because everything is focused on marketing," says Jaén.

«

, it stopped being radical and avant-garde to focus on partying.

And with that the modernity that was what La Ruta had ends, it is the story of a death by success”, concludes Aimeur.

Puzzle nightclub poster in Swedish

ALBERTO DI LOLLI

Although some still live on it.

Because when La Ruta was dying, Chimo Bayo toured the country from full load to full load with Así me gusta a mí.

after a decade playing in all the clubs in Valencia.

How did a professional motorcycle racer become one of the best known DJs in this country?

I started to DJ in the year 80 or 81 because I had an accident.

I didn't want to go to clubs, I didn't like clubs or nightlife, I was an athlete and I wasn't that cool.

Until I discovered the DJ booth, which they put me in there like a vase because I was on crutches and bothered.

One day they asked me if I could play some records because the DJ had gone to a Puzzle contest and as he asked for more money they threw it away.

That's how I stayed, we talked about 1982.

Well, what a change of life he had.

I always say we were stigmatized by people partying and getting high like now people don't.

I was a kid, I was very strong and for me it was a wonderful experience that 40 years later I am still living, people show me all their love.

This last summer is the most I have acted in my life.

But never like in the clubs of La Ruta to which he looks four decades later without wanting to return: «That was a moment in time, that's it, it will never come back.

».

Pure hedonism.

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