Andalusia, Spain: Flamenco 💃🏻

The tapping of heels on the floor, matched by rapid rhythms of clapping, and a deep female lulling voice … up and down, lamenting a lost love, or hoping for home: this is flamenco!

A style of song & dance from southern Spain that is like a kaleidoscope of sights & sounds that is wrapped-up together with Gypsy melodies and stamped with a seal that says ‘traditional Spain’.

I love Andalusian Spain, moorish Spain. A part of the Iberian Peninsula which was controlled by the Muslims for over 500 years, before being restored to Christianity by Queen Isabella right before Columbus set-off on his voyages of plunder to the ‘New’ World.

The architecture of Andalusia: churches converted into mosques, traditional hammams turned into tourist spas, and especially flamenco - this is what I love about Spain, the ‘other ’ Spain : different & very unique!

I have been fortunate enough to have visited many, many Muslim countries, - I love Islamic culture, history & architecture; and this part of Spain has a very moorish ‘stamp’ on it!

FLAMENCO epitomizes this part of Spain for me (it is said to have come from the Gitano‘s influence - all the way from India, and more recently from moorish North Africa).

Strolling in the Maria Luisa gardens in Andalusia, Seville, I happen to randomly come across a group of Flamenco 💃🏻 street performers practicing this beautiful song & dance. People flocking all around them, myself included - loosing all sense of time as I get swept away by its hypnotizing rhythms & honey-sweet melodies: leaving an after taste of satisfaction that I could still taste after walking all the way back to my hotel.

Flamenco! THIS is moorish Spain 🇪🇸

Though my words don’t do it justice, you really need to see this & experience it to savor it.