Manuel Muñoz Alcón (Sanlúcar de Barrameda, 1943-Jerez de la Frontera, 2022), universally known as Manolo Sanlúcar, took the name of his land because, along with the guitar and his family, it was the most love in life Withdrawn from the stage for his last ten years, he dedicated himself body and soul, like a hermit, to what today is his extraordinary intellectual legacy.
The entire vast legacy, by the express wish of the genius of Sanlúcar, passed into the hands of a Catalan with whom the master had forged a friendship in the final stage of his life. José Martínez Talavera, entrepreneur of a family insurance company, whose fondness for the guitar from a very young age ended up placing him, almost without intending to, in the most intimate circle of the multifaceted creator of the marshes. It is in this same environment of confidence and friendship that he received the assignment from Sanlúcar: "Even today I am not clear what he saw in me. Why did he think he was the right person to preserve his legacy, a lifetime's work? A responsibility to which I could not oppose".
From the office of a unique building located in the very heart of Santa Coloma de Gramenet (Barcelonès Nord), the company's headquarters, he recalls the day when Manolo Sanlúcar revealed to him his last wish, his desire: to have a foundation that , moreover, host a "museum", a place that transcends his person and endures in time. Martínez then proposed to him to convert his long elaborated pedagogical method into the International Institute of Flamenco Guitar Manolo Sanlúcar, where he could train students from all over the world following his teaching, the one from which figures such as Vicente Amigo, Rafael Riqueni, David Carmona or Juan Carlos Romero himself, his outstanding disciple who directs the institute by direct appointment of who was his teacher.
As a result of this sudden infatuation between the artist and the businessman, the Manolo Sanlúcar Aura Seguros Foundation was born in 2019, on the basis of which the company had previously created the Flamenco Arts Foundation. "I told Manolo that just as he had changed his last name to that of his city, we would do the same with his name", recalls Martínez. And so he began to take the first steps to embark on a path not without obstacles. To the difficulties of setting up a project of international scope like this, there came the pandemic and, later, the effort to strengthen the three main branches that sprouted from the trunk of a tree that today projects its shadow " com l'olivera fetitxe" under which many of the pages with the thoughts and studies of Manolo Sanlúcar were written in his placid intellectual retreat in the Sevillian estate of El Pedroso.
It is the most precious creation for the artist from Gadí, a creative, philosophical and didactic testament, divided into three written volumes. The first is Andalucía: la otra historia, a learned introspection about the origin of Andalusian culture, with flamenco as the seed, while also catalyzing the character and idiosyncrasy of Andalusia. A story told from a different point of view, in which music coexists in parallel struggle with the persistence and vicissitudes that marked the evolution of the Andalusian people, subdued for centuries. It is followed by two more volumes entitled La es cuela, in which the academico-artistic model defined by the master is revealed; a treatise on musical science, canons and everything that unites the dense Flemish cultural world.
A document that acquires the adjective historical and is considered to be the first to rigorously organize normative musical knowledge in the culture of the flamenco guitar. Added to this is the legacy in audiovisual format La guitarra flamenca, made up of thirteen episodes presented, written and directed by Manolo Sanlúcar himself, the result of many years of work and in which more than forty renowned artists participated who, with the flamenco guitar as a guiding thread, it encompasses a masterful exposition of the so-called palos del flamenco from a formal vision of its precepts.
Where is the foundation going? In order to promote the figure of Manolo Sanlúcar and spread the entirety of his legacy, a board of trustees was created that combined a technical management profile necessary for day-to-day governance, as well as another purely artistic and academic one, such as corresponds to the multidisciplinary personality of Sanlúcar. José Martínez is accompanied by the honorary president, Ana María Rencoret, the artist's widow, and the vice president, the Andalusian intellectual, ex-rector of the International University of Andalusia and ex-counselor for Culture of the Board, author and flamencologist, Juan Manuel Suárez Japón. The vice-secretary is occupied by Juan Carlos Romero, director of the International Guitar Institute, and the general director of Aura Seguros, Carlos Muiño, with guitarists and patrons Paco Garfia, director of the Flamenco-ON festival, José María Parra and Jordi Franco, prestigious luthier of the most distinguished national guitarists.
Manolo Sanlúcar said of the guitar that "it is a companion of loneliness, a challenge to the will, a measure of constancy, an invitation to the imagination, a source of sensitivity, a window to abstraction, a marrow of feelings, a record of the truth and a carrier of transferable knowledge”. Under this premise, the most ambitious branch of the foundation is, without a doubt, the creation and subsequent development of the Manolo Sanlúcar International Flamenco Guitar Institute. The primary objective is to become the largest and most relevant international school of this instrument in the world through the universal diffusion of the academic and artistic model defined by the Gadían in his teaching aspect detailed in La escue la. From the institute, the knowledge also collected in La guitarra flamenca will be imparted. A particularity that distinguishes the training of its different headquarters distributed throughout Spain and abroad is the special attention not only to musical technique, but also to consolidating a solid humanistic training.
To this end, the guitarist, composer and producer of stars such as Miguel Poveda, Carmen Linares, Pasión Vega and Rocío Márquez, as well as Sanlúcar's privileged pupil, Juan Carlos Romero, fine-tunes the institute's teaching program with the director of the Triana Symphony Orchestra, Manuel Alejandro González.
Sanlúcar de Barrameda will be the headquarters where the future directors of the different franchises of the institute will be trained, both in Spain and abroad, and which has even aroused the interest of oriental guitarists. Seville is the capital that will operate as a center and where the highest level students will complete their studies in a final cycle of two courses. Córdoba, Badajoz and Barcelona will host the first franchised centers to which other cities will gradually be added. International expansion will begin with China, France and Greece.
The headquarters of the Manolo Sanlúcar Aura Seguros Foundation is in a small palace designed in 1907 by Aníbal González, author of Plaza Espanya in Seville and main exponent of Andalusian regionalism. From the garden that precedes it, an imposing statue of Manolo Sanlúcar welcomes visitors. The facade faces an incomparable landscape, the point where the Guadalquivir becomes the ocean, presided over by the beauty of Doñana Park. In the space occupied by two of the floors, visibility will be given to all the goods treasured by Manolo Sanlúcar during his lifetime: an extraordinary collection of Andalusian art, the guitars, the prizes and recognitions, in addition to the creations, both musical and academic, in a format that provides for the latest audiovisual technologies to generate a whole sensory experience within the reach of visitors. The inauguration is scheduled for the first quarter of 2024.
Meanwhile, also with the support of the foundation, in February and March 2024 the fifth edition of the flamenco festival Flamenc-ON will be held. Without renouncing its main headquarters, Santa Coloma de Gramenet, the event will fulfill its metropolitan vocation and will extend to other localities. The following editions will also arrive in Sanlúcar de Barrameda. As a differentiating fact, Flamenc-ON also brings flamenco closer to an uninitiated public, such as schoolchildren, and programs street shows. In addition, it is a great springboard for flamenco talents in Catalonia, who have been able to share the stage with great established figures, such as Mayte Martín, Miguel Poveda, Vicente Amigo, Jerónimo Maya, Arcángel, Diego Carrasco and Cristina Hoyos, which makes it in one of the main flamenco festivals.
From Sanlúcar de Barrameda to the world or from Santa Coloma to the world, we could say. From the south to Catalonia and from Catalonia to the south, following the universal footprint of Manolo Sanlúcar, the foundation will present on November 16 the tribute to the artist who gives his name to the Latin Grammy gala that will be held in Seville. Juan Carlos Romero, his disciple and spokesman for the International Institute of the Flamenco Guitar, will interpret, accompanied by Paco Jarana on guitar, the percussion of Tino di Geraldo, the singing of La Macanita and the palms of the Mellis, De muleta, one of the pieces of Tauromagia, the composition that, after its publication, was elevated to the Olympus of masterpieces, both by the critics and by the figures of the flamenco guitar themselves. In his words, the most important flamenco guitar work in history.
