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Flamenco nights

Andalucía, 12th June

Last week we had our first taste of flamenco, something we had been looking forward to since we decided to come to this area. It was only a floorshow in a restaurant in Nerja and we didn't expect much having heard that true flamenco is rarely heard outside of private Spanish functions. We knew that this would be 'tourist flamenco' but we were pleasantly surprised and thought the group was very professional. There were las bailaoras, the dancers, un canteor, a singer, and el guitarrista, the guitarist.

The rhythms are quite amazing, whether on the guitar or the incredibly complex hand clapping.The history of flamenco is that an indigenous music developed in Andalucía in the Middle Ages when the Arab-speaking Moors occupied the region. Later, los gitanos, gypsies arrived from central Europe who brought their own musical traditions with them and the two combined to produce flamenco. It was largely unheard of outside of Spain until the 1920s but now is obviously quite a tourist attraction.

Encroaching wildlife

As the weather gets hotter the local wildlife gets more interesting. Imagine finding yourself sharing a shower with una lagartija, a lizard! There are jumping insects of all sizes and we're not sure how to tell our crickets from las cigarras, cicadas - or are they the same thing? This is an outsize one that we noticed by the side of the house a couple of days ago.

El fin de la primavera, the end of spring

Most of the prolific spring flowers are dying away now. The wild sweet peas were particularly rampant and grew over everything else in the garden. I'm now trying to pull up all the dead plants and each time I try to set about this enormous task I seem to get thoroughly scratched, bitten and sweaty! We now have a mountainous and tinderbox dry compost heap.Most improvements to the garden will have to wait until the autumn as the ground is now too hard and dry to dig. That will give me plenty to do as the weather turns colder and wetter, a state of affairs we can't even begin to imagine today as the sun beats down relentlessly, el sol pega sin piedad.

Sent by: Sue

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