Flamenco

To be honest, a Flamenco show was not high up on my list of things to do but Julie had done her research and assured me that Granada was home to real Flamenco and we had to go and see some while we were here.

We booked on a tour from our camp-site which offered transport to Granada, a guided walking tour around the Albazin (the old part of the city) and a Flamenco Show in a venue in the Sacramento caves.

Our site was about 4 Km outside Granada and waiting outside at 9 pm as promised was a rather luxurious 20-seater coach/minibus – at that stage we were the only passengers but over the next 45 minutes we wended our way through the busy Granada streets stopping at hotels to pick up the rest of the people on the tour.

Our tour guide gave a commentary as we drove through the streets towards the Albazin – mainly in Spanish as everyone else on the coach was Spanish, but also stopping every now and again to explain in English to us.

Having driven down the ‘Calle de Darro’ a single lane cobbled street, and it certainly couldn’t accommodate anything wider than our minibus! ( In fact we had to stop to allow pedestrians to pass by!) It was a beautiful alleyway next to the river Darro with the rock rising up on our right which was the foundation of the Alhambra and little buildings on our left.

We were dropped off on the edge of the Albazin, which is the old Moorish part of Granada. We were then taken on foot to tour through the narrow cobbled streets and plazas. With archways and sharp right and left turns, supposedly to prevent horse-back riders from entering in an attack.

The night-time view of the Alhambra from San Nicolas, a former mosque, changed into a church by the invading Christians, was breathtaking, but the best was yet to come.

Now when we had originally booked this I had imagined that the Flamenco show would be good but that it would be something scripted and rehearsed – the same show every evening for the tourists. Wrong! The entire troupe consists of about twenty-five dancers, guitarists and singers and each night a small group of them perform together.

The atmosphere was undoubtedly helped by the venue – there were about 30 of us sitting on small seats around the edge of a long narrow cave (by the way, inside these caves the temperature is always 21 degrees Celsius – cool in summer, warm in winter). In the middle was the “dance-floor” - a well-worn piece of wood, about 2 metres long and a metre wide.

The performers sat with us and after a while the guitarist started to play a few chords, the singer sang a few laments, the dancers started some rhythmic clapping. As a Flamenco virgin I wasn’t sure whether the show had started or they were just tuning up, but then one of them got up and started to dance, if dance is the right word. It’s more of an interpretive dance than anything pre-rehearsed and there is an incredible interaction between the guitarist and the dancer, neither controlling the other but both influencing what would happen next.

Four dancers who each performed twice, each very different in style, gave us a taste of real Flamenco – it’s raw, intense, showy and sometimes aggressive – they weren’t just putting on a show - they were showing-off. It was fantastic and I would definitely go and experience it again but we won’t get a chance this time round.