Photo: Paco Manzano
Last Tuesday, the home of Casa América in Spain?s capital was the venue that received the official presentation of the Las Minas Flamenco Tour, the internationalization project of the Festival del Cante de las Minas de La Unión.
Nine countries and three continents are set to receive the Cante de las Minas in coming months.
The event, overseen by the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, José Manuel García-Margallo, served to make public coming destinations that will receive the visit of the flamenco event throughout 2014 and 2015, in representation of the official image of “Marca España”.
Japan, India and China are the Asian nations that will host the festival, and Portugal, Belgium, Italy and Germany in Europe. The American continent will be represented by Peru and Mexico. In his speech, García-Margallo said “you have enabled the rest of the world to appreciate one of our greatest glories with the goal of spreading the image of Spain abroad to attract investment, help our businesses, sell our products and win over difficult markets”. He added that “as far as art, we have little to envy of other countries; we have flamenco which is appreciated abroad, even more than in Spain”, and he referred to Unamuno because “reveling in being Spanish is an honorable activity for anyone in this country”. He underlined that flamenco is a compendium of good and lovely things we must encourage from artists who have shown their support of the La Unión festival, such as Estrella Morente, Sara Baras, Carmen Linares, Miguel Poveda and the late genius Paco de Lucía among others.
And lastly, he noted that the agreement with the Festival “shows the government’s support for the La Unión event towards the internationalization of flamenco”.
In the words of Francisco Bernabé, mayor of La Unión and Executive President of the Cante de las Minas Foundation, “we have before us a great cultural opening that Spain is going to carry out in the near future to the rest of the world, because we are going to bring the best of flamenco from the most important interpreters, to every corner of the planet wishing to receive this Spanish musical manifestation par excellence”.
The presentation ended with a flamenco recital by singer Carmen Linares, who did a fine job setting the poetry of Federico García Lorca to flamenco, accompanied by the guitar of Salvador Gutiérrez and the piano of Pablo Suárez. Her vocal quality, which comes from the depths of the mine from whence arose the songs of La Unión, captivated the audience. The singer congratulated La Unión “for this grand festival which has been supporting quality flamenco for so many years, and which has always lent support to all the interpreters”.
She started out interpreting “an extraordinary poem of García Lorca, in honor of Enrique Morente, because he sang it so well, and because the great poetry of Spain is closely related to flamenco”. “La Leyenda del Tiempo” to tientos, and soleá and bambera with “Arbole, Albole”.
Following this, she went on with mining songs, “the deepest of all flamenco, such beautiful musicality”, to sing a taranta, cartagenera and cantiñas, showing once again her command of the songs of Linares where she is from, the origin of the cante of La Unión.
- In 2014: Brussels (January), Tokyo (August), New Delhi and Bombay (September).
- In 2015: Lisboa (January), Tokyo (February), Brussels (March), Lima (Abril), Beijing (May), Milan (June), Germany (July) and Mexico (November).