Mdlbeast Soundstorm, the macro music festival in Saudi Arabia in which women dance alone and with their hair in the wind

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• Women journalists before the World Cup in Qatar: without a veil but with decorum

Fatima gets out of her jeep.

She arrives with friends, most of them with the veil on their heads in the parking lot.

Then, as they get closer to gate 5, they take it away.

The more demure trade it for a baseball cap, others choose to break free.

It is a

in the middle of the desert the girls dance without a veil again in Saudi Arabia.

Some do it to the sound of a DJ from Jaén, mother and thirty-something, her first name is Beatriz Martínez.

But here, on one of the seven stages of the gigantic MdlBeast Soundstorm, she introduces herself as B Jones.

It is one more of the secrets of the largest music festival in the East, which this year has established itself as

In the middle of the soccer world cup, to compare, more people have come here in three days than to the stadiums of neighboring Qatar, more than 200,000 people per day, on the three dates that make up this event where everything is bombastic.

"It's wonderful to be here, it's a grain of sand for change," says this DJ who has made his career while raising a daughter, who is already 18 years old, the same years Beatriz was when she gave birth.

"We have to think about where we are, in Saudi Arabia, and that just the fact that there is a festival like this in this country is

We must review that there is at least one DJ per stage," he tells YO DONA.

Until recently men and women couldn't dance together... Do you know what surprises me?

That among all of them, who are euphoric, there is not a drop of alcohol or drugs. The overdose is, rather, musical.

It's the adrenaline...

The offer came to him after having been this year in Tomorrowland.

And he is, along with Brian Cross, the only Spaniards on the stages of this mega-event, which is actually almost a city within Riyadh, with an area

(just for comparison, Madrid Central measures 4.7 million square meters).

It has 86,200 parking spaces, that is, as much or more space only for cars than the largest stadium in Qatar (according to FIFA, the one in Lusail, with 80,000 spectators).

Total success

Everything to house this year

as many or more than Tomorrowland.

The big difference is that the legendary Boom festival (Belgium) needed nine days to achieve it.

This year, Mdlbeast Soundstorm did it in just three, exceeding 200,000 attendees per day, even reducing one day compared to last year, when it added 730,000 viewers.

Some scandalous figures for a country that five years ago did not even conceive of the existence of such an event.

Panoramic view of the macro-festival in Saudi Arabia.

This year they deployed all their power not only to invite global stars in front of the stage such as

among the two hundred artists hired.

Spanish stars have also been in their VIB boxes (acronym for Very Important Beasts) and in the VIB building (with suites of different sizes that cost tens of thousands of euros, including valet parking).

The Spanish presence

After passing through the Red Sea International Film Festival (in Jeddah) there have been the model and actor

the actress of 'La casa de papel' and 'Elite'

her boyfriend,

and the interpreter

They rubbed shoulders with top models like

There was no commitment, not even posts on Instagram, even if they did: it was about living in the moment and enjoying it.

All of them along with some of the richest people on the planet, Saudi royalty.

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The great thinking head behind these events is

heir to the crown and de facto monarch.

He is the architect of the Vision 2030 plan, a strategy that aims to position the kingdom as a tourist, artistic and economic power above oil.

And overcome the severe questioning of organizations like Human Rights Watch.

Lights and shadows

It is also true that there is much to change inside and outside the MdlBeast Soundstorm oasis.

Outside, even Arab women are far from being able to dance alone.

Inside,

because these men are not used to such freedom.

The luminous screens of all the venues warn of Respect, Reset, or their zero tolerance for trespassing with women.

But they still have so much to do... The saddened faces of the girls in the protected areas, where they take refuge when they feel intimidated, show it.

Even so, the artists defend that this is revolutionary.

Gordo, Guatemalan and DJ on the rise, maintains that they help a transformation.

"I will be able to tell my grandchildren in 50 years that I was here and

he describes.

A change on the horizon

It is the philosophy shared by Ghetta and the pioneer Cosmicat, the first Saudi dj, who left the stability of her profession as a dentist to fulfill her dream of DJing.

Already a symbol of rebellion and success for Saudi women, she greets us in her dressing room, an amusement park where she shares the bill with the other megastars.

"Thank you for listening to us," she says.

We remember the interview we did last year for Crónica and she continues to think the same:

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The last day, everything punctual.

A thousand drones draw in the sky men and women dancing on a dance floor.

It was the presentation of Bruno Mars, who was the true beast of the Mdlbeast.

But beyond dazzling dancing and singing, due to his visual wink, he did not go unnoticed.

He did it to

which exists and has danced with cautious debauchery amid the desert dust.

In full controversy because in Qatar they did not let footballers wear a rainbow bracelet, all those colors are seen on the screens of the main stage.

At 250 meters wide and 42 high.

Vibrating.

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