Madring: Flamenco reignites the debate on Spain's image

Flamenco at Madring reignites the fight over Spain's image

Minutes before the lights went out for the Spanish Grand Prix, an orchestra and a corps of flamenco dancers took to the track of the new Madring circuit. Formula 1 was returning to Madrid after 45 years, with a technical layout—including the banked curve—that surprised pilots for the better and an attendance of 350,000 people. The ceremony was intended to be a postcard of Spain for the world. For much of the audience, however, it was another thing: the umpteenth fight about what image the country exports.

What was seen at Madring before the race

For several participants, the event was a showcase of the city and, by extension, the country. All tickets sold out, and the debate regarding its economic legacy overlaps with the political. The detail that generated the most comments was not the layout or the lap times, but the preceding spectacle: live flamenco on the asphalt. Outside the circuit, some messages posted in the forum criticized the new layout for being boring.

Flamenco, Jota and the battle over what it represents for Spain

This is the core issue. One current holds that flamenco is the most recognizable hallmark of the country abroad and that renouncing it out of propriety would be a miscalculation. Another argues that Madrid has appropriated an Andalusian culture that does not belong to it, and that if the goal was to represent all of Spain, they should have mixed jotas, fandangos, and dances from other regions.

The discussion quickly delves into erudite detail: theories on the origin of the fandango, which some participants date to the 17th century—even in a Mozart opera—and the weight of the Cadiz schools. The names cited as pinnacles of the genre, Camarón de la Isla (San Fernando) and Paco de Lucía (Algeciras), almost always point south. The complete list of references and their schools, circulated in detail, could be a treatise unto itself.

Songs, banners and a petition to the FIA

The weekend left another front. According to messages circulated during the event, there were chants against the President of the Government by members of the public and a banner prepared to enter the camera frame. These same messages attributed to the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party) a petition to the FIA (Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile) to investigate what occurred. The episode transfers the cultural conflict onto political ground and adds a problem of image control to an event that aimed to project normality.

And there is the detail underlined by one participant. The flamenco piece claimed as pure and authentically Spanish—the jácaras, with 400 years behind them, performed by European musicians and antiestéticaturing a guitarist who recently passed away as a guest—puts a full stop to the matter. That it upsets someone is not a problem of Madring. It is a problem of who decides what Spain is.