In a small town near the Spanish coast, Lolita lived. Her town was small. You could walk from one end to the other without any problems, because it was very small. It is a town a little far from the big cities like Madrid, there are only old classic houses from other times. All the people in the town know each other because they are practically neighbors. In the middle of the town there was a small square where most people met in the afternoons after work to talk or have community meals, because it was very common to eat grilled fish or roasted octopus. Lolita, strange as it may seem, liked octopus more than fish, and that is strange for children, because most of them hate octopus. The thing is that in that square everyone met while eating to dance, there they only dance traditional Spanish dances, such as tango and flamenco.
Lolita grew up watching her neighbors dance, so from a young age, she began to feel an attraction towards flamenco, although music was barely talked about at home. Her mother spent her days selling fish at the market, and her father, when he was not at sea, worked repairing nets. That is why at the beginning she did not receive the best support to make her dream of being a flamenco dancer come true. Even so, her sister did encourage her to learn the art of flamenco dancing, because she had seen her dance many times and knew that she had good potential to be one.
At home there was not much support for dancing, but at the village festivals that were held in the square there was. In fact, it was her only escape from the exhausting routine of being the daughter of fishermen, because although it was a very happy life, it also required a lot of effort. Every year, at the San Juan fair, musicians and dancers from other towns arrived, the square was filled with color because for these festivals they used to dress in traditional colors that were very colorful. You know, Lolita would sneak in among the crowd to see the singers and dancers and with each click of her heels she wanted to do it too. But she felt ashamed of making a fool of herself, because she had practically no experience in dancing. So she held back her desire. When she returned home, she would imitate the dances she saw in the square and with those examples she saw she improved. It is true that she did not have suitable shoes or a flowing dress, but she managed with her worn espadrilles and an old skirt that she had inherited from her grandmother to imagine herself in her dream. It was very nice to watch her.
As she grew older, her fascination with flamenco became more intense, but also more solitary. In the village, the few times she mentioned her desire to learn to dance, the responses were always the same: discreet laughter or comments that she was still too young. Also, with the routine that everyone had, there was no time to dedicate to someone teaching her to dance, so they would say to her, "Flamenco, Lolita? And who is going to teach you here? You better help your mother at the market. That is useful." She kept quiet, but that disillusioned her a little. Although it did not take away all her desire to learn.
A week later, while returning from an errand for her mother, she heard a flamenco guitar playing. The sound was coming from a shop that was a butcher shop that sold Iberian ham. So, under the pretext of buying ham, she went to the shop to see who was playing the guitar so well. The guitar was being played by an older man who was behind the counter. It was not easy for her to approach him, because she really did not have enough money to buy ham, so her pretext of going there to buy it was going to quickly collapse. Even so, she continued on. On the butcher's suit was the man's name, his name was Joaquin. He had moved to the town a few months ago, but this was the first time she had seen him. The previous owners of the shop had moved to the city. So when she entered the shop, he said to her, "What can I help you, miss?" She only told him that she needed time to decide what to buy. So he said that there was no problem, that she could look at whatever she wanted.
After about ten minutes or so, Joaquin realized that she didn't have any money to buy anything at that moment. So he thought that she was just there to get a piece of ham. So he called her and said, look, if you want it, I can give you a peso of ham to eat. She said, no sir, don't worry. Excuse me for telling you before, but I just came to see you play the guitar. He was surprised because until now she was the first one who had been interested in seeing him play in the store. So she said, "You should have told me before," so he found her a guitar and started playing the guitar for her.
After that, they spent the afternoon talking and Lolita discovered that Joaquin had been a guitarist in his youth, accompanying some of the most renowned flamenco dancers of his time. However, a series of misfortunes had led him to abandon the stage and move to that town. Then Lolita told him that she was looking forward to learning to dance flamenco, but that no one in the village had time to teach her. She also told him that she had problems with some of the steps. He just replied, “Forget about the steps.” “Flamenco doesn’t start with your feet. It starts here,” and he pointed to his chest. “If you don’t feel it here, it doesn’t matter how many steps you practice. It won’t be flamenco.”
Then he said to her, “Look, if you come after lunch every day I can help you learn a little bit.” He could teach her because he had worked with many flamenco dancers in the past. So he knew the art of dancing. A few days later she began her apprenticeship with him. Joaquin taught her to listen to the music, and to know when to dance and how to do it. “Everything has a beat,” he told her. “You just have to find it.”
Over time, Lolita learned to dance flamenco very well. Now a very nice future awaited her, because she could begin her career in this new art, and she could participate in the dances that were organized in the plaza. What more could she ask for? Now she only had to continue improving so that one day she would be very famous and make the town proud.
Credits: The images used are free to use and royalty free. They were taken from pixabay.
