The Metro Dance Club in Bigastro has been closed down for three years, and the management fined 50,000 euro, for repeated non-compliance offences.
The Department of Justice, Interior and Public Administration has imposed the sanctions on the company responsible for the management of Metro Dance Club after nine other files opened against the company in the last 24 years for various non-compliance, ranging from exceeding opening hours to organising events without a licence, according to the resolution issued by the Ministry.
The closure decree is from April 2022, but it was only recently executed after several claims and appeals from the company that have been rejected.
The origin of the sanction dates back to October 2021. The company Yanoinma Mtro SL requested special authorisation on October 7 to hold an event outside the hours allowed in its opening licence, which runs from 5:00 p.m. to 7:30 a.m. The company then requested a permit for the “cafeteria” activity, with hours from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. for 10/24/21. The General Operations Directorate of the Department of Justice, Interior and Public Administration, in charge of granting said permit, denied it on 10/19/2021, notifying the company the following day. The nightclub filed an appeal, which was again denied two days before the event.
The nightclub, according to the resolution, did not cancel this party, so agents from the UCNP Comunitat Valenciana (known as the Autonomous Police), appeared at the facilities that day at 9 in the morning. The agents, as stated in the Department’s resolution, “verified that the establishment was open to the public with numerous people inside, with a fast food establishment open in the parking area and a dance floor in the adjacent area of about 1,200 square metres, covered and with three open sides, in which about 500 people are dancing, the majority without masks and without maintaining social distance, a record being drawn up for this fact.
From the room they alleged then, as they maintain now in the publications made on social networks in which they defend themselves against these accusations and point to “police harassment” as the cause of the closure, and that the people who were in the premises were outside of the discotheque, in an outside area, waiting for the money loaded on their bracelets and that had not been spent to be returned.
However, the resolution states that three hours after the inspection by the agents began, at 11 in the morning, “the establishment was still open with people dancing and consuming on the terrace and the music at high volume”. Therefore, for the administration, taking into account that this licence had been requested for the event to continue beyond 7:30 a.m., which had been denied, and that even so at 9:00 a.m. it was still open, “the bad faith of the Administrator-operator of the company, who intends to request from the Administration an activity outside the ordinary hours of the one for which he has a licence (discotheque), in order to continue the discotheque activity without time limit.
The resolution goes against both the company, Yanoinma Mtro SL and its manager, José Ramón Navarrete. This company has been listed as the holder of the Metro Dance Club licence since August 2010, but the manager has been linked to the premises “for more than 20 years,” states the Consell’s opinion. A situation that has been taken into account when issuing this sanctioning file, since there are different previous files and complaints, since March 2022. The ruling states that “we cannot omit the offending will over the years, nor that the establishment has been sanctioned on many occasions, including with closure sanctions. And despite all this, the attitude of the sole administrator of the company is to circumvent the legislation applicable to the establishment that it runs, attempting to mock the Administration in this case, alleging that the people who are in a tent consuming and dancing are waiting to be refunded the amount paid and not previously consumed, or stating that they are on tables and stools, especially taking into account that the agents leave the establishment “3 hours and 30 minutes after its closing time and the activity there continues”.
The resolution cites up to nine open sanctioning files, the majority for non-compliance with schedules, capacity and for dedicating the establishment to an activity for which it does not have authorisation.
With the aim of joining forces and demanding its opening, Metro Dance Club has started a collection of signatures on the Change.org platform that has already collected a total of 5,500 signatures. The Bigastro Council has also shown, in a very unusual move in these cases, “its unconditional support” in statements that the town’s Festival Councillor, Manuel Giménez, has made public on the club’s own social networks. Giménez thanked Metro for its work during these years and noted that, thanks to this, “it has made Bigastro an international epicentre of musical culture with professionals from all over the world.”
