However, once she started dancing, pure astonishment ensued. It seemed incredible that this slip of a woman, shy and almost fearful-looking, could have notched up such success and admiration. She returned to Spain with full honours in 1947, enshrouded in a saint-like halo. She took Buenos Aires by storm and went on to conquer Latin America and the United States, culminating in a front cover on Life magazine and a private performance for President Roosevelt in the White House. They headed for Portugal, and from there to Argentina on a two-week sea voyage they would remember for the rest of their lives as an utter nightmare. The Civil War broke out in 1936 and she had to take her family and flee the country. This constituted her enthronement in Spain, although paradoxically it also heralded the end of her career there. Her name had already crossed borders, and in 1935 she made her début in the Coliseum Theatre in Madrid. Soul, pure soul…”īarcelona soon became too small for her. And then comes the jump: the gypsy dances. Carmencita: impassive, haughty and noble. In the words of the critic Sebastià Gasch, who wrote for the Mirador weekly: “Picture a 14-year-old gypsy girl sitting on the chair, on the tablao. “The Captain” – as she had been dubbed in the city’s flamenco circles – was on everyone’s lips, although her name was not to appear in print until the 1929 International Exposition. At first sight she might have looked like that typical girl with a special charm, but it was also equally evident that there was something much deeper in the way she moved. Who is this prodigy? people wondered, on seeing her move like a will-o’-the-wisp. © Gjon Mili / Time & Life Pictures / Getty ImagesĪmaya in 1940, in a feature in Life magazine.Ī legend was already in the making. Her father played the guitar and the girl sang and danced into the wee small hours, and then they returned home, tired, but glad to be able to bring the family a bite to eat. lel, peppered with singing taverns and cafés.She was not yet six years old when her father, out of pure necessity, began to take her to the flamenco areas of Barcelona, in La Rambla and Paral “The sea taught me to dance,” she said on more than one occasion. The truth might be otherwise, but what is certain is that we can scarcely imagine a more premonitory beginning for someone whose legend was built upon incomparable temperament and strength. Officially born in 1913, in Barcelona, it is said that the night of her birth there was a raging storm at sea and the waves crashed against the doors of the shack she called home. Who was Carmen Amaya? Or perhaps the question should be: who is Carmen Amaya, that woman whose presence is still felt constantly by all those who love flamenco, gypsies and non-gypsies, and vice versa? Leaving aside other, more or less correct and lamentable answers, the fact is that the centenary of her birth is a great opportunity to recover such a colossal genius. Why have the citizens of Barcelona – the Catalans – been so miserly with the memory of this woman, an undisputed and universal reference of our culture? Carmen Amaya belongs to a different realm… “Ay Carmen, Carmen, Carmen Amaya!” goes one of the many folk songs dedicated to the great flamenco dancer, with a tone which intermingles reverence and sadness. It is obvious that Barcelona’s “official legends” are different: Gaudí, Ildefons Cerdà, Miró, Joan Gamper et al. In part, this is because there has been an almost conscious attempt to ignore her, although those who do remember her speak of her with a healthy dose of admiration and devotion. The relationship between Barcelona and this great legend of flamenco is surprising. Although if someone did say that, they might not be that far wrong either. I don’t think it could be said that the people of Barcelona do not know who Carmen Amaya was, or for example that we do not know that she was born in Somorrostro, a shanty town that existed in Barcelona, by the seaside, until the mid-20th century. The bailaora while filming Los Tarantos, in 1963.
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