El día que apagaron la luz

On December 30, 2004, a crowd of teenagers packed the República Cromañón venue in Buenos Aires. The second of three consecutive concerts by the popular underground rock band Callejeros was about to begin. But shortly after the first song started, tragedy struck: a flare hit a tarp on the ceiling, and in a matter of seconds, a violent fire erupted, claiming the lives of nearly two hundred young people and injuring close to a thousand. This event, one of the worst tragedies in Argentina's recent history, not only shocked the nation but also marked the end of innocence for an entire generation. Some time later, Camila Fabbri, who had attended the concert the night before, addressed the disaster and its consequences in this book, which we are now reissuing, twentieth anniversary of the catastrophe, with a previously unpublished prologue by the author. Halfway between a multi-voiced novel and a journalistic chronicle, Fabbri constructs an evocative narrative in which he pours out his own memories and the testimonies of those affected. With a lucid and serene gaze, he does not seek a journalistic recap of the events nor to point fingers, but rather to explore the human dimension of the accident and present a snapshot, both personal and historical, of an era. Throughout the work, his voice blends with those of friends, family, and witnesses, forming a fragmented yet precise mosaic of an event that remains painfully present in the collective memory even today.