In spite of my Salfordian roots, I knew nothing of Manchester’s most infamous nightclub until one evening my Dad decided he’d play us some proper tunes. You know the drill, “Not like this shit you lot listen to nowadays”. He played “Voodoo Ray” first, “the best song ever made”. He’d tell me about him and his pals’ pill-packed pilgrimages to said club: the Haçienda. Little did I know of the regional rabbit hole I’d just entered, a culture untold by history books, but deeply-woven into a generational tapestry of ecstacy, pub loudmouths and thumping 4/4.

For those of you yet to be harassed by a middle-aged Manc’s endless reminiscence, the Haçienda was a progressive nightclub funded by Manchester heartthrobs Tony Wilson and New Order, both of Factory Records fame. Opened in 1982 and taking its last breath over a decade later in 1997, the club became the epicentre of the Madchester music boom and a cathedral for progressive, loose-fit, acid house.

It’s been well over 20 years since the club took her last breath, and the North West has been on a collective cultural comedown ever since – still desperately clinging on to the foggy memories of nights past, too lethargic to get off our arses and move on with our lives.

It’s time to get up, smell the bacon, and beat our nostalgia-drenched hangover.

“You’ll never see the Hacienda. It doesn’t exist. The Hacienda must be built.”

Those are the words of Ivan Chtcheglov, words which captured the imagination of Factory Records co-founder and manager of New Order, Rob Gretton.

In his Formulary for a New Urbanism, Chtcheglov expresses a distaste for urban living, particularly its socio-political and mental impact on the individual: “We are bored in the city,” he exclaims, “there’s no longer any Temple of the Sun.” An inspiration to the Situationist International, Chtcheglov believed that to combat the surge of urban living, the mind needed “free play”, an escape. Chtcheglov believed this existed in the guiding light of the “Hacienda”, an unobtainable utopia.

Fuelled by Joy Division’s profitable, albeit tragic, end, and with direct inspiration from Chtcheglov’s text, Factory Records saw an opportunity: the chance to open a new club in their hometown of Manchester, to build the Haçienda.

The Haçienda was, and still is, considered a cultural success. The club became an oasis in the unforgiving deserts of Thatcherism, miner strikes, and mass unemployment. The Haçienda was a gathering space for anyone and everyone, regardless of class, race, identity, or geography.

This philosophy was by no means exclusive to Manchester’s Haçienda, but a hive mind born of the acid house scene that struck English towns and cities from the mid 80s through to the early 90s. In spite of Manchester’s limelight hogging, similar venues existed in Burnley’s Angels, Liverpool’s Quadrant Park, Warrington’s Legends, Blackburn’s Sett End and Blackpool’s Shaboo, just to name a few.

Chtcheglov’s proposed Hacienda doesn’t exist, it never has and never will. But this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive toward this luminary idea. Since Tony Wilson’s attempt we’ve become languid, trying to ride out the highs of yesteryears.

Ironically, in mourning this long-dead club, we’re an embarrassment to the explicitly political ends it was built to serve. Our nostalgia has stagnated culture. As Gen-Zs now breaching our mid-twenties, we’re sold the idea that the Haçienda was the best it’s going to get, that nothing of the sort could ever happen again – we’re paralysed by the ghosts of culture past.

All of this isn’t to say we should build a new progressive club in the North West. I merely hope this serves as a wake-up call, a call to action, for anybody frustrated by the lulls of the current day. A brighter future won’t be born of repeating yellow and black chevrons but the galvanisation of forward-facing people.

Yer mam and dad had their Temple of the Sun, so where’s ours? The responsibility is yours just as much as it’s mine. The Hacienda must be built.