Learn and Live Spanish in Spain

don Quijote is a prestigious and well-known organization dedicated to teaching Spanish abroad. Over 125,000 students have learned, lived and enjoyed a full Spanish immersion experience in our Spain and Latin American destinations since 1986.

Daniel de la Roca

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Flamenco shoes are specially designed for flamenco dancers who perform a specific dance that accompanies flamenco music. The term “flamenco shoes” generally refers to the female flamenco dancer’s shoes because in most case the male flamenco performer wears boots. These special flamenco shoes are particularly important because they are used as percussive instruments that accompany the music. This is because the flamenco shoes have special nails in the heels and toes that enhance the sound of the movements.

Flamenco is a Spanish art form that fuses music, singing and dance, all done in a specific style. In fact, the styles are so specific to flamenco that they can be described with their own terms: “toque” refers to flamenco guitar playing, “cante” refers to flamenco singing and “baile” is the term used for the special flamenco dance style.

Flamenco performances are common during religious festivals, celebrations, ceremonies and rituals. Flamenco shows have long delighted both Spaniards and foreigners alike and continue to be a major tourist attraction in Spain. In fact, in November of 2010 UNESCO declared flamenco in Spain as a Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.

For those just starting to learn how to dance Flamenco, it is probably not necessary to buy flamenco shoes yet. Since most flamenco shoes are high-heeled, a sturdy pair of jazz or ballroom dance shoes should be adequate for beginners. As you advance with flamenco dancing, you will eventually need to purchase a good pair of flamenco shoes because the sound produced by them is vital as the shoes tap the flamenco rhythm and this requires training and a specific technique.

A traditional flamenco shoe is often red or black and matches the beautiful flamenco dress of the dancer. The heel of the shoe can vary in length but often measure between one and three inches (2.5-7 cm). Flamenco pumps also generally feature a strap or ties that cross the foot and lace up above the ankle designed to keep the shoe securely in place. Depending on your flamenco outfit, you can decide which color and type of flamenco shoes are best.

Flamenco shoes can be purchased worldwide, although most serious dancers prefer to order them from traditional Spanish shoe makers who can produce handmade and customized shoes. The cost is not excessive for an authentic pair of Spanish flamenco shoes. Proper shoes can make all the difference in the world to a dedicated flamenco dancer who knows that the rigors of flamenco foot stamping can be difficult on the feet.  

In order to choose the best flamenco shoe, it is important to take some things into consideration: color, material (leather, suede, synthetic), heel type (standard, carrete, cubano), heel size, buckle versus straps and whether or not you want the nails pre-installed (they are often sold without nails to practice). Additionally, the quality of flamenco shoes vary based on experience levels: amateur or training flamenco shoes, semi-professional flamenco shoes, professional flamenco shoes and elite flamenco shoes, for the accomplished flamenco dancer.

Some Famous Spanish Flamenco Shoe Makers

• Ainhoa: Angel Blanco’s small shop is located in Madrid and produces 100% artisan flamenco shoes and boots for all levels.
• Menkes: This prestigious flamenco brand uses modern technology while maintaining the traditional and artisan concept of flamenco shoe making. They guarantee their flamenco shoes for 50 years.
• Roberto Garrudo: Robert Garrudo produces high quality artisan flamenco shoes and pride themselves on their high level of quality service. The shoes are made from top quality materials with attention to detail and are comfortable and flexible.
• Buleria Sabates: This Spanish shoe company located in Alicante is specialized in originally designed women’s flamenco shoes. Their shoes are handmade with top of the line materials.
• Gallardo: This brand is completely made by hand in the traditional way. It is a well recognized brand known for its excellent quality and comfort, used by many flamenco artists and dance companies. Gallardo can also customize your flamenco shoes.

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Spanish Flamenco Guitar

The differences between classic Spanish guitars and flamenco guitars were not originally differentiated but rather evolved over time. Andalusian guitar-makers originally made flamenco guitars with a wide range of materials to suit different price categories. The cheaper guitars were made from cypress rather than rosewood, which was imported and therefore more expensive. The prevalence of the cheaper guitars would eventually evolve into the major distinction in construction between Spanish classical guitars and Spanish flamenco guitars.

Nowadays, traditional Spanish flamenco guitars are normally made of spruce or cedar tops and cypress or sycamore bodies. However, other wood can also be used including rosewood, maple, koa, satinwood and caviuna wood. Classical guitars, often referred to as Spanish guitars, are often made of mahogany, Indian or Brazilian rosewood for the backs and sides and the soundboards (tops) are made of spruce, red cedar or mahogany.

The combination of wood gives the flamenco guitar its classic color, lighter weight, and more percussive sound quality. Its “brighter” sound is also achieved by reducing the internal bracing and thickness of the wood used in the guitar’s construction. A flamenco guitar, in addition to being more percussive and brighter in sound, is also described as drier and more austere than a classical Spanish guitar. Flamenco guitars have more punchy tones and wide-ranging sounds that have been utilized by jazz and Latin artists as well as in Renaissance and Baroque music.

Spanish Flamenco Guitarists

The volume of the flamenco guitar is crucial as the Spanish flamenco guitarist must be heard over rhythmic clapping and the dancers’ tap dancing with nailed shoes. To achieve more volume, flamenco guitars are constructed with a combination of harder wood for the back and sides and a softer wood for the top. Flamenco guitar players also often use a cejilla (capo) in order to change keys and create a more sharp and percussive sound. Over time, flamenco guitarists developed techniques to enhance their sound and make their music more aggressive since they are often accompanied by orchestras, flutes and other percussion instruments.

Flamenco guitarists often use different postures, strumming patterns and techniques then those of a classical guitarist. One of these techniques, called golpes, involves the flamenco guitarist rhythmically tapping the soundboard area of the guitar. The rhythmic golpes are likely the biggest distinction between classical and flamenco guitar playing and are responsible for producing flamenco guitar music’s characteristic sound.

Golpes are employed by flamenco guitarists often and freely and are characterized by the following terms: toque airoso (graceful, rhythmic), toque gitano/flamenco (deep and expressive), toque pastueño (calm, fearless), toque sobrio (sober, not showing off), toque virtuoso (masterful), toque corto (short, basic), and toque frío (unexpressive). The flamenco guitar is protected from the golpes with a plastic guard called a golpeador that must often be replaced.

Other flamenco guitar playing techniques include: alzapúa (a thumb strumming technique), picado (quick single line scale technique), rasgueado (rhythmic strumming technique) and tremolo (rapid repetition technique of a single treble note).

Some famous Spanish flamenco guitarists (tocaores) include: Raimundo Amador, Vicente Amigo, Pepe Habichuela, Daniel Casares, Paco de Lucía, Enrique de Melchor, Manuel Molina, Manolo Sanlúcar, Paco Serrano, Pedro Sierra, Victor Monge (Serranito) José Fernández Torres (Tomatito) and many more.

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The dress is figure-hugging, ankle length, with ruffles in both the layered skirt and the sleeves. The most common colors for flamenco dresses are red, black and white but they are typically bright colored. The most typical Spanish flamenco dress features a polka dotted pattern (traje de lunares), but they can also be plain dresses with no pattern. The flamenco dancer normally appears with her hair in a bun, a mantle (similar to a shawl) on her shoulders and high heels. Over time the flamenco costume has become richer in color and has adopted adornments and compliments such as lacing, embroidered ribbons, flowers, costume-jewelry and hand fans.

Flamenco clothes are now thought of as traditionally Andalusian clothes but actually originated from the Spanish Gypsies (Romani people) in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Women, dressed in calico gowns with ruffles, accompanied livestock traders that gathered at the Prado de San Sebastián for what would become Seville's Feria de Abril (April Fair). Their look, over time, was adopted by women of other classes and in 1929 even distinguished ladies appeared in traditional flamenco dress at the Ibero-American Exhibition. Eventually the Spanish dress from Andalucía would become the official outfit for the Seville Fair.

Flamenco dance wear has changed over time and become more widespread in use. In the 1960s and 70s, Spanish flamenco dresses began appearing with shorter skirts. However, by the 1970s the dresses returned to their traditional longer form. By the early 21st century, Spanish flamenco dresses were available in a wide variety of colors, patterns, sleeve lengths, and ruffle amounts.

The unique look of flamenco dance wear inspires designers from all over the world to produce their own flamenco dress styles by combining tradition and innovation. Victorio & Lucchino have their own line of flamenco costumes and designers like Saint Laurent, John Galliano, Valentino Garavani and Tom Ford have been openly inspired by the genre. In fact, each year at the International Flamenco Fashion Show in Seville designers present the latest trends in flamenco clothing.

Flamenco clothing has stood the test of time and will continue to reinvent itself as an important part of the Spanish culture and tradition.

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Labyrinth of Passion was the beginning of a mutually rewarding partnership that gave way to such unforgettable releases as 1986's Matador, Law of Desire (1987), and box office hits Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988) and Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1990) which piqued Hollywood's interest in the Latin sensation.

He crossed over to American films in 1992, playing a young Cuban musician in The Mambo Kings. At the time he was cast, Banderas spoke no English words and had to learn all of his dialogue phonetically. However, his screen presence was so intense, it provided the jump-start Antonio needed. He was cast opposite Tom Hanks in the 1993 Oscar-winner Philadelphia, then went on to take a bite out of the big screen -- and some innocent victims -- with fellow blood-suckers Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise in the 1994 blockbuster, Interview with the Vampire. The breakout (leading) role that garnered him Hollywood success was in the 1995 failed film Desperado.

With an impressively long of movies to his name, the actor once saturated audiences with a surplus of movie releases in 1995. This overexposure endangered him in becoming a media burnout, thus delegating the actor to take a break.

Some of his early credits include romancing Glenn Close and Winona Ryder in The House of Spirits, a lover in Miami Rhapsody and a role opposite future wife Melanie Griffith in 1995's Two Much. They married in London 1 year later. In The Mask of Zorro (1998), Banderas got the honor of being the first Latino to represent the 19th-century Mexican masked avenger. He gave voice to Puss the Boots in the 2004 animated movie Shrek and tackled the true-life story of ballroom dancer Pierre Dulaine, who volunteered his time to teach a group of inner-city kids how to dance in the 2006 movie Take the Lead.

The melodramatic nature of his films has made Almodóvar a Spanish cultural reference within his smoldering good looks and great charismatic personality, it is easy to see why this Hollywood conquistador was chosen as ""one of the 50 most beautiful people in the world"" by People Weekly. Banderas founded his own production company Green Moon Productions, whose name pays homage to Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca and received in 2008 the Gold Medal of Arts from the hands of the Spanish King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofía for staying true to his roots as an artist and as a person.

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His idea at first was to make movies about the capacity to act of certain people who are not actors: “As a child, I remembered seeing that quality in some of the women in my family. They faked more and better than men. And through their lies they managed to avoid more than one tragedy. Forty years ago, when I was living there, La Mancha was an arid and machista region, in whose families reigned the Man from his upholstered armchair. Meanwhile, the women really resolved the problems, in silence, having sometimes to lie in order to do so”.

All About My Mother

“Against this Manchegan machismo which I remember from my childhood, the women faked, lied, hid, and that way allowed life to flow and develop, without men finding out or obstructing it. Aside from being vital, this was quite spectacular. The first spectacle that I remember seeing was a group of women talking on the patio. I didn´t know it then but this was going to be one of the subjects of my thirteenth film, the capacity of women to playact, to fake”. His widely known 1999 movie All About My Mother pays a grand tribute to women, their friendships and ability to renew themselves, winning him the 2000 Oscar for Best Foreign Language film. For this, he is often described as a ""women's director"" because many of his films have revolved around strong, sympathetic female characters.

By early 1980's, Almódovar had made a name for himself while steadily becoming the leading figure in Madrid's flourishing alternative cultural movement known as La Movida. Today, no longer the kid who sprang from Madrid's anything-goes night life, armed with a hand-held camera, to record the intoxication of Spain's post-Franco freedoms, he has reinvented himself triumphantly as a consummate stylist with a serious touch.

He's propelled the careers of Spain's most influential actors like Penélope Cruz and Antonio Banderas. He even has famous Hollywood admirers tag after him, like the great Dustin Hoffman, who has expressed an interest in working with the director and American actress Glenn Close who repeatedly states she would “love to work with Almodóvar,” but her “zero knowledge of Spanish is the only thing keeping her sidelined.”

The melodramatic nature of his films has made Almodóvar a Spanish cultural reference within the film panorama whose legacy bears testament to a brilliantly crafted Spanish hard-pop artistic movement.

“I have no objection to my name being used to promote Spanish cinema; on the contrary. I shoot in Spanish, I produce other Spanish-speaking films, I live in Spain and this is my culture”

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San Sebastian International Film Festival

The San Sebastian International Film Festival is the most prestigious in Spain and also one of the most important festivals in Europe due to the caliber of movies presented and the international repercussions each year. It is the only film festival in Spain listed as a category “A” event, one of only 13 in the whole world.

The event is held in Donostia-San Sebastian, one of the most beautiful northern cities in Spain, is located on the coast of the Basque Country region. The city has been then host to such recognized films stars such as Bette Davis, Gregory Peck, Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey Hepburn, Robert De Niro, Richard Gere, Michael Douglas, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Mel Gibson, Demi Moore, Naomi Watts and Brad Pitt, and great directors such as Roman Polansky, Francis Ford Coppola and Pedro Almodovar.

The official awards Film Festival San Sebastian are:
 

• Golden Shell for the Best Film
• Special Jury Prize
• Silver Shell for the Best Director
• Silver Shell for the Best Actress
• Silver Shell for the Best Actor
• Jury Prize for the Best Cinematography
• Jury Prize for the Best Screenplay

Malaga Film Festival

The Malaga Film festival is dedicated exclusively to Spanish cinema. The offical name of the event is <em>Festival de Málaga Cine Español (FMCE) and began in 1998 to drive the Spanish film industry. As it is well known, Malaga is home to the famous international actor Antonio Banderas, one of the reasons that this city has such a strong affiliation to Spanish film.

The official awards given at this festival are the Golden and Silver Bignagas for best film, best director, best actress, best actor, best music, best cinematography, etc.

In recent editions, the festival has opened up to allow Latin American Spanish language films into a section called Latin American Territory. The result is a renovated impulse in Spain of this less known film sector and a sharing of ideas from both sides of the Atlantic.

Sitges Film Festival

The Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia is one of the most well known festivals dedicated to this cinematographic genre. The festival started in 1967 in Sitges, a touristic city on the Mediterranean Sea, only 40 km (25 mi) from Barcelona.

For all fantasy, science fiction, or horror film lovers, Sitges is a great place to enjoy the best new and upcoming films in special showings. In recent editions, the festival has welcomed a staggering 50,000 spectators!

Throughout the festival some of the most famous directors, producers and actors have shared their new work. Some of the big names to pass through the Sitges film festival include Anthony Hopkins, Quentin Tarantino, Dino De Laurentiis, Ralph Fiennes, David Lynch, Sam Raimi, Terry Gilliam, Vin Diesel, Tobe Hooper, Tony Curtis, David Cronenberg, Ray Liotta, Jason Patric, Peter Greenaway, Guillermo del Toro, Kim Ki-Duk, Martin Sheen, Stan Winston, Rob Cohen, Ray Harryhausen, Takashi Miike, Douglas Trumbull, Fay Wray, Jeroen Krabbé, Tadanobu Asano, Dario Argento, Rob Bowman, Guy Maddin, Ben Gazzara, Álex de la Iglesia, Eli Roth, Brian Yuzna, Bret Ratner, Hideo Nakata, Stuart Gordon, Julia Adams, Joanna Cassady and Jaume Balagueró.

Some important films debuting during the festival include: Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001), The Bourne Identity (2002), Kill Bill (2003), The Holy Mountain (1973), Mulholland Drive (2001), and many more.
 

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The year 1931 saw the introduction of sound in foreign productions which severely affected the Spanish film industry (only one movie came out that year) until Cifesa Company (Spanish Industrial Film Company Inc) introduced sound to Spanish cinema. Cifesa would become the biggest production company in Spain and in 1974 produced the movie Don Quijote de La Mancha, the most elaborate film of Cervantes' classic up until that time.

During the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s, propaganda and censorship was introduced into Spanish cinema El cid, The Fall of the Roman Empire and Lawrence of Arabia.

With the end of the Franco's dictatorship in 1975, the censorship on films was greatly loosened beginning an era of Spanish filmmakers dedicated to controversial topics during the period known as la movida. Democracy in Spain has permitted Spanish films to evolve and adapt over the years and Spanish cinema has become known for its sophisticated melodramas (Almodóvar and Alex de la Iglesía), black humor (Santiago Segura) and versatility (Amenábar).

Luis Buñuel was the first Spaniard to ever achieve international recognition but in recent years, Spanish cinema has been gaining ground for its creative and technical excellence. Pedro Almodóvar became critically acclaimed in the 1980s and other important directors include: Segundo de Chomón, Florián Rey, Luis García Berlanga, Juan Antonio Bardem, Carlos Saura, Julio Médem and Alejandro Amenábar. Many famous Spanish actors and actresses have also obtained international notoriety such as: Antonio Banderas, Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz, Maribel Verdú, Paz Vega, Fernando Fernán Gómez, Fernando Rey and Francisco Rabal.

Agora, by Alejandro Amenábar, Ché, The Machinist, The Others (starring Nicole Kidman) and Milo Forman´s Goya´s Ghosts. Planet 51, an animated Spanish film dubbed in English and also the most expensive movie ever produced in Spain, debuted internationally in 2009. The movie set the record that year in box office sales for a Spanish film and also won a Goya Award for Best Animated Film.

However, some famous Spanish films in their original language have also managed to stand their ground internationally and have landed on the list of the top grossing Spanish-language movies in the US such as: Pan's Labyrinth by Guillermo del Toro and starring Maribel Verdú Talk to Her, All about My Mother, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Bad Education and Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! all by Pedro Almodóvar. Also, Alejandro Amenábar's film The Sea Inside, starring Javier Bardem, won an Oscar in 2004 for best foreign film in 2004. In 2006, another Almodóvar film called Volver won awards at the Cannes Film Festival and received various nominations for Golden Globes. Penélope Cruz, the lead character, was nominated for an Academy Award for best actress for her role in the movie.

Spanish cinema will keep evolving and adapting to the times and, even if you are not aware, the next film you watch could very well be from Spain. In 2002 Woody Allen, a famous American filmmaker, commented: “when I left New York, the most exciting film in the city at the time was Spanish, Pedro Almodovar's one [Talk to Her]. I hope that Europeans will continue to lead the way in film making because at the moment not much is coming from the United States.""

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