La Pèrgola

Valencia is once again preparing itself for an afternoon of pleasant civic disorder disguised as a concert. On 31 January, under the broad steel ribs of La Pèrgola at La Marina de València, a gathering of the curious, the musically unhinged, and the culturally over-caffeinated will converge for Festival Love to Rock — a party operating somewhere between cultural celebration and sonic ambush.

The poster tells you everything and nothing: three men in matching glittering red jackets, each armed with an instrument and an eccentric hat collection that would make a royal cavalry outfitter blush. They grin at the camera with the calm confidence of people who have either achieved enlightenment or are about to start a controlled demolition of someone’s expectations. Beyond them: cattails, water, and the faint silhouette of mountains — a pastoral scene waiting to be corrupted by amplified electricity.

Headlining the affair is Derby Motoreta’s Burrito Kachimba, the Sevillian psych-rock sextet whose self-invented genre tag — kinkidelia — sounds like something smuggled out of a late-night police report. Formed in 2017, they quickly became the country’s most reliable exporters of flamenco-soaked, fuzzed-out, cinematic delirium. Their soundtrack work on the feature film Las Leyes de la Frontera only confirmed what many already suspected: this band doesn’t just play music, they build sonic architecture and then set controlled fires inside it.

Derby tears through stages like a caravan of psychedelic locksmiths breaking into the collective subconscious. One part progressive rock séance, one part Andalusian fever dream, one part shameless riff worship — and all of it glued together with the sweaty conviction of a revival tent preacher. They are not here to soothe you. They are here to recalibrate your central nervous system.

Sharing the bill are Llobarros, Valencia’s proudly local agitators of surf-rock, garage grit, and cheeky subcultural mayhem. The band operates with the cheerful impunity of people who know where the bodies are buried (musically speaking), bringing a cocktail of Mediterranean swagger, barroom energy, and the type of rhythm section that behaves like it gets paid by the calorie burned.

They don’t just open shows — they salt the earth for the headliners. Expect twang, expect punch, expect jokes you shouldn’t laugh at but will anyway. Valencia claims them proudly, and for once the city is justified in its civic bragging.

All of this goes down at La Pèrgola, the seaside venue that has quietly become one of the Marina’s most dependable cultural accelerators. With the sea lurking just meters away, the gulls circling like disinterested security personnel, and the whole industrial-maritime chic aesthetic humming in the background, the space has become a laboratory for festivals, matinée concerts, and civic gatherings where beer and sunlight do the majority of the marketing. It’s the sort of venue that makes you question why anyone ever tried to listen to rock music indoors — the air tastes like salt, the breeze carries the scent of ship fuel and optimism, and even the concrete seems in on the plot.

Expect the show to function less like a concert and more like a ritual — a psychedelic Andalusian sermon backed by Valencia’s own sonic infantry. Expect glittering jackets, strobing guitar tone, flamenco cadences, and the slow disintegration of whatever preconceived genre categories you still cling to. Most of all, expect the realization — somewhere between the first beer and the final encore — that Spanish rock is still evolving in strange, brilliant, and deeply necessary directions. The doors will open, music will happen, and afterwards you will walk out into the maritime night air with your synapses rearranged and your endocrine system confused but grateful.

For tickets and more information: La Pèrgola

Photo credit: Rhyan Paul