Party promoters

They will bother and pester you long after you’ve told them you’re not interested.
They will also probably touch you without your permission, or explicitly against what you’ve said to them (ex: “No, don’t touch me.” *grabs arm and makes smoochy noises*).

This is where the phrase

NO ME TOCAS

comes into play handily.

NO ME TOCAS means Do Not Touch Me. It’s handy to shout when party promoters get too friendly when you try to brush past them.

Once, girlfriends and I were all sat in a cluster next to one of the fountains in Plaza del Sol. Really, we were just people watching on a Monday evening.
As we watched a group of break dancers spin and do what they do, a yippy little young man with a tell-tale lanyard around his neck and promotional cards in his hands walked up. No, no, no, no we’re fine. We’re not going out tonight.
He argued a little (they always do), we insisted. He left.

We kept watching the dancers, we got caught in a Very odd conversation with a traveling Dutchman who was probably mentally unstable (and wanted to talk about the reality of multiverses, hmmm), who then went to “dance” with the group in front of us. We waved at girls we went to school with as they passed in short skirts and their hair all done— headed to the discotecas (P.S. calling night clubs “clubs” in Spain gives a connotation of drugs and prostitution, so yeah: discotecas).

And then the tiny, yappy man came back. With a friend.
(Another party promoter.)
I tell the guy we’re not interested, but he doesn’t care, and starts working on the Italian girls, trying to talk them into coming out (and, based on personalities of the group, he’d made a wise decision. These girls were the most likely to break down and say yes to going with him.)
I strike up a chat with the guy he’d brought with him.
He was from Galicia, a region in the top of Spain. Hi, I’m from Texas. He gave me a cigarette and we stood chatting amicably (if not the slightest bit flirtatiously) until I see the yapper reach out a hand and touch the face of a girlfriend of mine who recoils in disgust.
NOPE
I shout out at him No le tocas!
And he snaps his head around.
I had been standing a few feet apart from the group while smoking, and was charging right at him.
NO we are not interested
NO we are not coming with you
NO you cannot touch us

His response? Telling me I don’t speak for my friends and starting to talk to them over my shoulder. There’s a few of us mad by this point and he’s being surrounded by pissed American girls shielding our beloved Italians (and one seething Norwegian).

He argues, we shout him down, and in a fit of fury at his unwillingness to back down (and outright refusal that touching her face was wrong) I shoot my hand up and run it across his cheek.
His friends eyebrows shoot up.
And the yapper’s mouth goes open in rage.

DON’T TOUCH ME
he pipes back at me.
Well, don’t touch us. The same rules apply.

He marches away in a fit, and his charming friend follows with a shrug, a smile, and a parting nod. We settled down and went back to chatting undisturbed.
This is just an illustration of how gross the party promoters can be.

We were yelled at, insulted, and once felt so threatened by a promoter we ran from him. Be prepared for some grade-A asshole-ery from promoters if you’re going out.

Granted, there can be an upside!
If you befriend a party promoter, or have a favorite discoteca, you can often get a promoter to work out really good deals for your group.

A girlfriend named Marisa was pals with a promoter and could often get us into one place with free drinks, a free shot for each of us, and once we got a bottle of champagne thrown into the deal, too.
Once we went to a PACKED little place that played really great South American dance and the promoter had a messenger bag full of everything a person might need on a night out: bandaids, mints, hair ties, hand sanitizer… condoms. The man was prepared to prepare you. He was also kind. He gave us his card, we gave him our business.

Now, I am not 100% sure how the job of party promoting works, but as far as I know it works like a sales commission, essentially.
The people who come into the discoteca that a promoter bring results in the promoter getting a percentage of the clubber’s entrance fee.
In situations where a group of girls gets into a disco free (to even out guy-to-girl ratio), I’m not sure what that does for the promoter, but I know in one instance the door guard was really glad to see us, so I’m sure there’s some sort of kick back (maybe a bonus if it’s girls? Who knows).

In conclusion: be safe, don’t take no shit, NO ME TOCAS, and have fun. Make friends.