The comic that dissects how we have danced

When a family has been managing entertainment venues for 155 years, its history becomes a collective memory, as it encompasses as many people as have enjoyed them. And if it happens to be the Arnau family, with such renowned milestones as the Florida135 nightclub in Fraga, the Monegros Desert Festival, and, more recently, the Elrow parties around the world, it ends up becoming part of the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.

This is what the graphic novel Elrow. Origins (1870-2025) (Norma Editorial, also in English) does, a project by Juan Arnau Durán, or Juan Arnau III – the same name as his grandfather and father and the name of his son and a grandson – the patriarch of the family. Arnau had already told part of the story in the novel Bailar en el desierto (Dance in the Desert, Grijalbo, 2023), but that stopped in 1962, while the comic comes to the present day.

The comic covers everything from a 19th-century proto-ave to today's Elrow macro-parties.

As Norma's editorial director, Luis Martínez, explains, contrary to what usually happens, the work was almost finished, and he immediately realized that it was necessary to make this story, which begins in a protorave in a corral in Fraga, in 1864, known in order to reach the real raves . Arnau had been working on it for ten years with scriptwriter Xavier Morató and cartoonist Josep Giró, who managed to give this family story an intense narrative, using the ghosts of the Dickensian past, present, and future— disguised as Xavier Cugat, DJ Laurent Garnier, and the mascot Rowgelia—to travel back in time and encompass everything. "We had to find a dramatic moment to resolve so that it wouldn't simply be a flat story of openings and closings of venues," explains Morató, for whom, in the end, it has become "a story of entertainment, and that goes even beyond music."

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“Although it may not seem like it to some, entertainment didn't begin with Wi-Fi; before that, there were card games, dancing, and live music,” insists Arnau, who also assures that “it didn't have to be a documentary, with excessive information, but rather, like everything I've done in life, it's focused on the audience, in this case the readers, enjoying themselves.” “I'm considered a successful businessman, but I haven't always been one, because the key isn't knowing how to win, but knowing how to lose,” confesses the patriarch, who doesn't shy away from acknowledging some of the failures and difficulties they encountered along the way, but which ultimately serve as the spur to move forward.

The book, with covers by the artist Okuda, traces a family history that begins with José Satorres and the opening of the Josepet café in Fraga, which later gave way to the Victoria cinema, which, after a family union reminiscent of the classic feuding families like Capulets and Montagues, leads to the Florida lounge, which gradually mutates into the Florida135 nightclub under the watchful eye of Juan Arnau Ibarz, or Juan Arnau II, who over the years will end up being known as “the techno grandfather.”

It was with him and his son that electronic music was introduced, DJs emerged, club culture, raves – with what would become the Monegros festival – and the massive festivals and parties of Elrow, today with another generation at the helm, Juan and Cruz Arnau Lasierra, a whole history of dance music – abbreviated in an epilogue by Javier Blánquez – with the best of the scene at each moment, a guide that covers the main genres, artists and venues, in other words, our history, because, as Arnau remembers, “we have all danced.”