105,00 MHz - Locactiva Radio 105.0 FM received in Germany

transmitter: El Bonillo, Spain (Castilla-La Mancha)
style: Electronic / Dance Classics
claim: No te conformes con menos
date of reception: 04 June 2025

remarks: The origin of this station can be traced back until the late 90s when LocaFM in Madrid was launched on 94.2 and 99.1 MHz. There was another dance network, MQM DANCE broadcasting on 96.1 FM in the capital at the same time until somewhere in July 2006. After their competitor stopped, LocaFM took over the strong 96.1 FM from MQM which was changed to 96.0 FM in 2009 or 2010. You can find recordings of both frequencies, the old and the new one, on my channel as my listening activities and experience regarding LocaFM and the FM band in Madrid go back 20 years. In June 2009 Loca was still on 96.1 FM but one year later it had switched to 96.0 FM. As LocaFM was quite popular among other electronic music radio stations, the network started to grow all over the country with outlets on the Canary islands and Ils Balears.

So far about history which you need to know to understand why today there are Locactive Radio and LOCA FM.

Loca Activa Radio was the logical consequence for the team of the former LocaFM La Mancha franchise to stay independent, after the (yet successful) LocaFM network was taken over by french Groupe M6 (RTL) in autumn 2012, and the spanish version had been transformed into Loca FUN Radio first and later into FUN RADIO Spain.

The old LocaFM launched in 1998, was a techno and club station with clear focus on underground dance and high-speed electronic music, providing all sounds of less commercial house and techno music. After the frenchmen went into the market, the station was quickly developped into a Mainstream CHR with commercial dance music as well as remixes of Top 40 chart hits and RNB tracks. The small rotation of recent songs did repeat after 90 minutes and all unknown techno tunes or dance classics had been removed from the playlist. However, the spanish audience did not accept this kind of hit radio as a minimal compromize towards the club scene, and the spanish version of the french FUN RADIO went down within a few months.

About only two years later, LOCA came back - first, most of the former frequencies e.g. Salamanca 87.5 FM were occupied by a non-stop webchannel called "LOCA LATINO" and later under the new name LOCA URBAN with the more and more popular Raggaton style, while new frequencies had to be found in those cities for the "normal" LOCA FM. Many of them were not as good as the original ones e.g. Salamanca 108 FM at the upper end of the band 2 while 87.5 FM was often heard in Germany because it was low in the band 2 and totally free over there. You can also find a recording of LocaFM Salamanca from 2010 and another dated 2016 between my videos before it went to the sister station LOCA LATINO / URBAN.

In the past decade, LOCA FM did return step by step on several frequencies, but from 2018 was driving a "Remember" format with focus on 90s music and disco classics even from the 80s as well as millennials, similar to TOP remember and Remember The Music in the València area.

The new LOCA FM that can be heard today on 96 MHz in Madrid offers a wider selection of commercial dance music, in the middle of the old LocaFM which was there until september 2012, and the new one after the re-start.

Because of that, today there is a La Mancha based independent dance radio with a name very similar to Loca. When they started in 2013, they were still on 105.1 MHz but later this frequency was corrected into 105 MHz.