Fair enough, but I was more thinking about the blatant Pagan celebration that is masked in a pseudo-birthday of Jesus? I mean almost nothing about it is Christian, even down to the Scandinavian "Yule log", the tree and presents... its all pagan.

There possibly were five doors in the arena.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understood it only one was available for emergency exit use and the others were all sealed.

True, when viewed that way.
The one & only important thing that Christianity celebrates is that birth.
All the rest (the tree, yule log etc) is mere "trimming" with nothing faintly related to the birth story. But it shouldn't stop Christians enjoying the festivities as long as they don't lose sight of the bigger picture.
Many people seem to think that Christians have to be gloomy & miserable. Should be the opposite.
Heck, even Christ enjoyed parties!

Fair enough. I'm certainly not gonna bash religion, I have no problem with people believing anything they want, never have.

Very approximate as its generally thought Jesus was born around the beginning of April. Much easier to hi-jack an existing pagan feast.

Yes, you're right, reading it again it clearly states only one door was open, some were sealed.

It does become clearer if you look at the layout of the place:



It seems that there were far more people entering and leaving, many without tickets, than the 38 security staff could cope with. The mayor of Madrid has said they won't rent out public spaces for "raves" like this any more.

Alot of the safety in planning and layout of arenas such as this has been well documented and enforced in the UK after things like Hillborough etc. Most recommendations have been turned into law and there are guidelines on crowd safety available for anyone wanting to organise a meeting of a couple of dozen up to a couple of dozen thousands. £millions has been spent on redesigning stadia in the UK to meet such requirements.
Most of this has been taken and transposed with in some cases only minor alterations into EU law on public safety.

The thing that makes me angry is when people start wringing their hands and talking about "lessons being learnt". That is rubbish (the polite word) the lessons have already been learnt but people have taken short cuts to make more profit, authorities who should be monitoring things havent bothered or have taken short cuts themselves. There is no reason for one person to die on a night out - in this case, although still a tragedy it was a good thing that only 3 young lives were cut short. It could quite easily have been many many more.

I just hope that it isnt found that just one or two people are at fault and end up in court, there are many more who should be in the dock.

`

We just got a nice surprise a few minutes ago - a man (who we don't know from Adam) knocked on our door, he'd come to bring us a copy of the photo he'd taken of us outside the house at Halloween, and wish us Merry Christmas. So we did get to see it after all. What a nice thing to do.

Thats really nice Lynn, shows you are more appreciated than you realised.

I must admit I was touched.

But next year I am making an appointment at the hairdresser's, putting on some decent clothes and doing my make-up in case they come back again, because I look a complete fright in the picture! Who needs Halloween costumes when you can look like that naturally!

don't do yourself down

perhaps next year you will be more prepared.

considering its my birthday I never seem prepared