The Ciutat Flamenco festival, organized by the Taller de Músics, will celebrate its 30 years of life from October 20 to 29 with a series of events and concerts that will take place in different spaces in the city of Barcelona. The Apolo auditorium, the Tablao de Carmen and the Byron bookstore are some of the stages that will host prominent flamenco artists trained in Catalonia this month. Among them, performers such as Ángel Rojas, Laura Santos, Pau Figueres and Patricia Guerrero will appear.
The novelty that this commemorative edition of Ciutat Flamenco offers compared to previous years is a family concert by Flamencas Fantásticas. It will take place at the Tablao de Carmen on October 21. There will also be the first dance competition within the festival, dedicated to the figure of Carmen Amaya and a Gipsy Concert tribute to the work of the same name written by Enrique Cofiner y Sabicas in the 70s.
The festival organization held a presentation event in the lobby of the Universitat metro station. Both Lluís Cabrera Sánchez, the founder of the Taller de Músics, and Santiago Torres Sierra, communications director of TMB, were present there. “Barcelona is a city of flamenco,” stated Lluís Cabrera. That is why the festival aims to honor the artists who have trained there and encourage future young people to continue their training. The first voice to inaugurate this festival was Paula Domínguez, accompanied by the guitar of David Leiva, who is also the artistic director of the festival. Then it was the turn of the artist Lorena Oliva, who danced accompanied by Leiva's guitar and Álvaro López's percussion.
Also present at the event were Mimo Agüero, owner and director of the Tablao de Carmen, Luis Troquel, music journalist, and Toni Moñiz, dancer and director of the José de la Vega Flamenco Dance School. The latter highlighted that “Barcelona is one of the most flamenco cities in Spain and the world”, with a “promising future”, but that it needs its authorities to continue supporting art and culture.
This edition of Ciutat Flamenco will be dedicated to the memory of Julián Navarro el Califa, a reference of the genre who died last year at the age of 61. Because of his “precise and sober” way of playing, in Cabrera's words, the Caliph was “an essential musician” in the flamenco awakening in Barcelona.
The week before and after the festival, a series of concerts framed as OFF Ciutat Flamenco will be promoted. Thus, this commemoration will bring together activities from October 13 to November 5. The complete program of the event is available on the website www.ciutatflamenco.com. There, those interested will also be able to check the availability and prices of tickets.
