macroraids, knife fights, rapes, racist attacks, sexual videos of minors… For some time now, the Waka Sabadell macro-disco has become a vending macro-machine for burning headlines. They call themselves “the most famous nightclub in the area” by the “bundling parties”. This Saturday morning -a day when minors can enter-, EL PERIÓDICO has made an incursion into the room that has become fuel for heated controversies and reprehensible episodes.
There’s no way to get lost. In the middle of an industrial area, close to two paddle tennis clubs and very easy to park, stands this industrial warehouse of more than six thousand square meters whose illuminated signs announce, with voltaic self-affirmation, that you are already in territory “Waka.”
Pajamas and no cars
The first thing that catches your attention, as in almost all underage clubs, is the absence of cars. In an area far from the city, there are very few vehicles for the number of people waiting at the entrance of the premises. The reason? It’s Friday, and the entrance is +16. Many of the attendees do not have a driver’s license, but that does not mean that they go by public transport either. At the entrance to the nightclub, a scene similar to the one at the school gate is repeated. A car appears, the kids get out, take the bottles of alcohol, say goodbye to parents (los papijamas, in teenage night slang) and these go The same image is replicated during the early hours of the night, when three or four teenagers get out of the cars with containers full of soda or directly bottles of alcohol.
The disco opens at twelve at night, but at that time nobody enters yet. The most important ritual is missing: the previous. Adolescents and adults sit on the floor of the industrial zone while they serve themselves the cubatas. There is also no shortage of those who alternate it with a joint. The first vomiting starts at one in the morning.
Less people, less problems
When entering, it is surprising that as soon as there is a queue. You wait a couple of minutes, they check your bag, you show your ID… and go inside. In the early hours of the morning the disco is rather empty, with a hundred people, far from the 3,000 that marks the maximum capacity. As the dawn progresses, the place fills up. Of course, without approaching the massive influxes that the videos and images of the disco’s social networks show. It’s summer and surely a bulk of the kids who come during the year are now on school holidays.
Perhaps that is why the night passes without major shocks. The usual events in this type of clubs are repeated: dizzy teens, risqué scenes and some other bite for sure. About the three in the morning, a watchman throws out a drunken young man who was becoming violent and pushes a colleague of the injured boy. He doesn’t keep quiet, he replies, and the moment of tension ends up dissolving before the circle of spectators that has formed around them in search of action.
Rings for them, bladed weapons for them
What does not change at any time of the year is the sexism that governs this type of clubs. Both the attendees and the organization fall into widespread gender stereotypesespecially at those ages. In line to get in boys are ordered to remove necklaces and rings, and their pockets are frisked. The girls, at most, look at their bags, but they don’t say anything about the accessories. These can be dangerous in a fight, something that, in the opinion of security personnel, is just a man thing.
In fact, women have another reserved place in the club: the raised platforms that rise up in the DJ area. Although throughout the club there are several platforms where you can go up to dance, the highest ones and in view of all are reserved exclusively for girls. The only man at the mixing desk is the DJ and around him are young people in dresses dancing. Surely they are having a good time and have uploaded voluntarily, but there is no doubt that the disco uses them as an image claim.
Reputation
“Fights usually take place outside, not inside the premises, but they are very common,” admits a boy, who makes it clear that this Friday does not live up to the reputation that the place has earned. Other Waka regulars warn that more than once they have left without a walletor what the environment did not seem safe.
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Last year, the Town Hall of Sant Quirze del Vallèstown where the disco is located, demanded the closure of the premises, after what two rapes occurred in less than six months. Complaints of assaults are also recorded repeatedly, and you only need to search for Waka’s name on the internet to check the latest controversy that has taken place. Even so, The disco also has support, such as the Barcelona Discotheque Guild, who defended this space in a statement as “an emblematic establishment, that has been supported by various generations for 28 years.
Be that as it may, from five in the morning the kids are heading towards the street, where a fleet of pajamas at the wheel are waiting for them to take them back home. What happened in the Waka stays in the Waka.