This time it is not due to the increasingly unaffordable rent prices in Madrid, nor to the purchase of the building by a fund that is interested in the property but has no use for the people living there. The closure of Carabanchel’s legendary rock venue Gruta77 (Cuclillo Street, 6) after 26 years of operation is due to something as human—and as characteristic of our times—as the sheer exhaustion of Juan Luis Nieto, alias El Indio, its manager.
“I’m exhausted. The mental and physical effort required by a project like Gruta77 is very high […]. At 57, I need to rest and improve my quality of life,” he confessed in a statement he released on social media.
In it , he has wanted to address, in particular, the Gruta77 audience—“to you, customers and friends”—whom he has wanted to thank for their loyalty over the years and for being “the best Rock and Roll audience on the planet,” both during the venue’s most prosperous moments and its most challenging ones.
“I’ve fought tooth and nail for my dream; I managed to turn it into a shared dream thanks to your love for Rock and Roll, but now let me be selfish and take a breather,” reads ‘El Indio’s’ farewell message.
The Importance of Gruta77 for Music in Madrid
The importance and, above all, the involvement of Gruta77 in the city’s music scene goes far beyond the activities of the concert venue on its ground floor. A commitment to music that can be traced as you go up the floors of the building.
It is on the upper floors where its more than 20 professional rehearsal spaces and school for singing, guitar, and drums are located. A resource that musicians like Robe Iniesta championed throughout their careers to facilitate and promote opportunities for young musicians.
All of this has contributed to this legendary rock venue being recognized as a Cultural Heritage Venue of the City of Madrid. And within that ecosystem, Juan Luis Nieto’s role for decades has been to “personally program, produce, and promote every event, as well as advise the bands using the rehearsal spaces” in a vocational capacity, according to the Madrid City Council’s page on the venue.
The last concerts scheduled at Gruta77 before the closure
Gruta77 will close its doors this coming December, but first it will bid farewell in style with concerts through November 26, which can be found on its website. However, once the shutters come down, it will continue to nourish Madrid’s music scene through the Gruta77 promotion company, with concerts scheduled at other venues under its label.
In recent years, the building’s façade has proudly displayed—as a tribute spearheaded by Paco Graco—a selection of commercial signs from long-gone Madrid businesses, bearing witness to the history of families and shops that have woven the fabric of our city. And not without a certain poetic touch, starting in December, it will be the Gruta77 sign itself that will become part—with the naturalness of a farewell that is already expected—of Madrid ’s graphic and emotional heritage, which will always be present, in one form or another, wherever there is rock and roll.
