HOW I CREATED A MUNCH
IN BARCELONA

Some time in 2019 I was looking around for meetups and other ways to interact with kinksters in Barcelona, but it seemed like there wasn’t really any regular groups. I realised that the groups which did exist seemed to be hard to find or mainly in Catalan/Spanish and with super outdated online presences. Even though the meetups I planned to host would be mainly in English, I do (and did at the time) speak Spanish. I decided it was time to ‘test the water’ and see if there was a market for an English-speaking kinkster meetup in Barcelona.

The concept

I have never actually been to a munch before, but having read about them many years ago I decided that I would copy the standard format, then try to expand and host other events once they became successful.

I worked a lot on the concept of how to advertise the events and what type of people would likely attend.

I decided that I would probably get international people attending as well as local people, so focussed this website and the Fetlife event content around that demographic.

The first event

For the first meetup location, I chose a somewhat obscure bar in El Gotico, (L’Ascensor), which had a nice laid back vibe, warm mood lighting and great drinks, which would hopefully positively characterize the whole night.

I put the event out on Fetlife just over a week before and nearly 20 people came. Awesome result!

Given that the first one went well, I decided to do another one the next month. It was clear that people were interested and that there was a community out there, it was just a case of getting the recipe refined.

I decided to switch the meetup from Thursday to Friday night and this proved to work well - it seems a lot of people also work quite late, so the starting time of 8pm seemed to be the best time for most.

Also, I realised that I wanted the space to be bigger and more dynamic so that people could move around freely, rather than be seated and locked-in. For this reason, I booked Bare Nostrum, which had a mix of seating and barrels to stand around casually.

The issue with hosting these events is booking the spaces. You never know how many people will show up and at what time. Also, there are not a lot of bars which are kitted-out for big groups on-the-fly, especially without making a prior booking.

The third meetup location seemed to be the best (Ambar, in Raval) by which time the number of people coming had proven to be upwards of 20 each time, once again confirming the interest of the event.

What’s next?

Hopefully with an active chat group, we will have some interesting themed event ideas and I am already working with some people who I have met at the events to host unique events!

Conclusion

There is definitely a ‘market’ for international, English-speaking kinksters in Barcelona. People seem to either live here, or be passing through. So far, I have met people from (in no particular order…) USA, Canada, Australia, France, New Zealand, Brazil, UK, Ireland, The Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Portugal, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Japan, Russia, Jamaica, Nigeria and of course Barcelona & Spain!

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