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Spanish Culture |
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Widely known
for Flamenco music and dance, bullfights,
fantastic
beaches and lots of sunshine, Spain has much more to offer than
that. It is-and has been for thousands of years-one of the cultural
centres of Europe.
"Spain
is different!", Spaniards use to say. They don't specify compared
to what: to the rest of Europe, to the rest of the world, or even
to itself ? We don't know either, but we do our best to supply you
with lots of information so you can find the answer to this question
and many others by yourself.
Spain has an extraordinary artistic heritage. The dominant figures
of the golden age were the Toledo-based artists El Greco and Diego
Velasquez. Francisco Goya emerged in the 18th century as Spain's most
prolific painter and he produced some wonderfully unflattering portraits
of royalty. The art world in the early 20th century was influenced
by a remarkable group of Spanish artists: Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris,
Joan Miró and Salvador Dalí.
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Spain's architecture ranges from prehistoric monuments in Minorca
in the Balearic Islands, through to the Roman ruins of Mérida
and Tarragona, the decorative Lonja
in Seville, Mudéjar buildings, Gothic
cathedrals, castles, fantastic modernist monuments and Gaudí's
intricate fabulist sculptures.
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The guitar was invented in Andalusia in the 1790s when a sixth string
was added to the Moorish lute. It gained its modern shape in the
1870s. Spanish musicians have taken the humble guitar to dizzying
heights of virtuosity and none more so than Andrés Segovia
(1893-1997), who established classical guitar as a genre. Flamenco,
music rooted in the cante jondo (deep song) of the gitanos (gypsies)
of Andalusia, is experiencing a revival. Paco de Lucia is the best
known flamenco
guitarist internationally.
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His
friend El Camarón de la Isla was, until his death in
1992, the leading light of contemporary cante hondo. In the
1980s flamenco-rock fusion (a.k.a. "gypsy rock")
was developed by the likes of Pata Negra and Ketama, and in
the 1990s Radio Tarifa emerged with a mesmerizing mix of flamenco
and medieval sounds.
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Bakalao,
the Spanish contribution to the world of techno, emerged from Valencia.
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SPANISH NAMES
