Flamenco y La Fiesta

The first week of October I went to my first Flamenco show. Flamenco is the popular dance in Analucia (Southern Spain). It is really popular in Granada and Seville and many of people involved in Flamenco are gitanos (gypsies). It's not a dance that you throw down at a club, it's more of crazy Spanish tap dance that you go and watch. There is one man who plays the guitar, another sings (they call it singing but is sometimes sounds like a painful cry for help), and at this particular show there were three women and two men dancers. Two of the women were kind of scary, kind of like Britney at the MTV awards but they were better dancers. The dance becomes really intense sometimes and so do the facial expressions. It was fun to see to because I had been hearing and learning about it for the past month so I finally got to see what it's all about.

My favorite Spanish culture experience so far has been the parade in Selebraña. Now I know that parade sounds lame and not fun, which is generally the opinion I hold, but this parade ended with a FIESTA! My friends and I decided to go to Selebraña which is a beach town about 50 minutes away from Granada. We knew there was some form of a fiesta and paella but we had no idea what it was going to be like. We found the beach and starting walking down the boardwalk when the parade began so we decided to watch. The second I saw a woman drinking a beer in her Flamenco dress and walking in the parade I knew that this could be nothing but good. Within seconds of the beer sighting a group of men (Los Fiesteros) invited me and my friends to walk in the parade and not long after that I too was a woman walking in a parade drinking a beer. The float we are walking with was stacked with beer and food, and of course a leg of ham. I am very proud to say that I was part of a Spanish parade; of course I know that we stuck out like sore-thumbs but it was worth it. After the procession ended all of the floats lined up along the beach and the fiesta began. The scene reminded me of a tailgate on the beach with legs of ham and bread instead of hamburgers and hotdogs. We made friends with one particular Spaniard, Antonio. He was very kind and more-or-less took care of us the whole time. Every time I turned around there was some new item of food being served or a beer being handed over to me. There was so much food that a larger space was needed to accommodate the group, so eventually Los Fiesteros moved the party to what I would like to call a VFW-type building not far from the shore. At this location there were some new food items, and 8-year old girls in Flamenco dresses bartending. When one asked me what I wanted I almost died, what a dream-come-true. While all of this was going on a bar on the beach was cooking a giant pan of paella, which of course we bought some later. We finally had to go and catch our bus around 7pm, so sadly we missed out on hitting up the disco on the beach. HaHa. It was a fantastic experience and really did give me a piece of Spanish culture. The whole event reminded me of something you would see on the travel channel and think, hey I would like to do that knowing that you probably never would, but I did. Maybe I can be the next Rick Steves. Yeah right, but I know kind of how he feels.