Flamenco Summer Day 3 Part 4: 10 August 2009
Well it was a good thing that I was feeling free and confident, because I had to find my way around town. 
Jerez is small but labyrinthine. Winding street encircles winding street, especially in the old gypsy quarter where I spent a lot of my time.
In fact I started to feel like Sarah in (cherished 1986 Bowie/Jim Henson confection) Labyrinth, as I was led a merry dance through alleys and round churches and into squares and ending up back where I started. I discovered that the trick is to just keep heading in the direction of your destination: every street is so interconnected with every other one that you’ll get there eventually. Just be prepared for a few detours. No wonder everyone here has such a relaxed attitude to time..
Still, I found my way right across town to Plaza del Mercado eventually, where I met the others. It was a sleepy square, with a tiny cafe bar in one corner, several small dogs noodling about (no doubt plotting their next poop mission) and palm trees waving lazily in the night breeze. We snaffled the last table at the bar, which was to become our favourite place. A real spit and sawdust joint, with a tiny horseshoe bar inside and an epic plasma TV outside, which half the town seemed to be sitting watching as they ate, drank, chatted and yelled at whatever football foul had just been committed. An entire leg of jamon sat behind the bar, ready to be carved, and the bar also had the world’s smallest toilet. I’m not kidding. It made aeroplane toilets look like the Ritz penthouse. I nearly dislocated my shoulder in there just trying to turn around.
On the plus side they served cheap and generous portions of good, simple tapas (I recommend asking for media raciones unless you really are ready to eat a horse); equally cheap and generous servings of booze and they seemed to like having us there, even though we were plainly hanging out in a locals’ joint. It was a joy to be there – it was real, homey and far from the tacky tourist traps with their dessicated patatas bravas and picture menus.
The bar was also my first introduction to the joys of tinto de verano – literally “summer red wine”. It’s a mix of red wine and lemonade – but a particular sort of Spanish lemonade – mild and low in sugar – in the limon variant, more like bitter lemon. When I first came across the drink I was sceptical – nay, snooty! It sounded like sangria – cheap, nasty, sickly. (I was wrong on this as well – proper sangria is one of life’s great pleasures – imagine a sort of decadent mulled wine, but served cold – it’s a different dimension to the cheapo party fuel of Magaluf et al). But I hadn’t bargained on the shredding heat of Jerez in August. The temperatures climbed to the mid 30s in the morning, cleared 40 by lunch, and at night? It got down to about 27 if you were lucky. Drinking red wine in this heat felt about as appealing as gargling with sawdust. But tintos – clean and fresh and full of ice and so lethally drinkable they might as well have been Vimto – tintos were made for the job, and I was hooked from the first taste. (I’ve tried recreating them at home, but it just doesn’t work – the lemonade isn’t right, but most importantly – it’s not a sultry summer night in Jerez. They belong to a specific time and place.)
We were at Plaza del Mercado to catch a show at tablao El Laga de Tio Parilla – a touristy joint, but we didn’t care, it was the first night and we were on the hunt for duende. We just wanted first blood. It’s not cheap – 16E each, including a drink (but their tintos were grim premixed numbers – avoid this at all costs). You get about an hour of dancing with 3 or 4 dancers who change each night. We actually went twice – more out of desperation than anything else – and the experiences were vastly different – more on that later. But on the first night, it was great.
One dancer in particular, 
Manuela (below) was fantastic – in fact we later spotted her on
the cover of Song of the Outcasts, a book on flamenco. Another dancer who I think was called Kaya (in the orange polka dot dress) was really something special.
You can see this just from the photos. She had it, she had duende in spades. I was completely entranced, and then poleaxed when I found out she was just 16. She had the presence of a woman twice her age.I’m struggling to describe her, really – let the pictures tell the story.
The other dancer was just OK, and looked bored out of her mind while clapping along, and it felt a bit by numbers – there’s not much more depressing than this, when you get the feeling that you’re considered just some stupid tourist that they’re doing a little song and dance for. But Manuela was a joy – she exploded with energy, she laughed and smouldered and drew the audience into her world. Kaya blew my mind. I was really pleased with some of the photos that I managed to get of them.
We headed back to the bar afterwards, where we met some locals, including Rafael who we’d see a lot that week. He seemed kindly enough, commenting on my height immediately and reassuring me that this was nothing to worry about with flamenco, as if he’d guessed my concerns. Eventually the bar closed at about 2am (well it was Monday night) and I wandered home through the silent streets, drunk on tintos and duende, like a very happy and slightly tipsy cat.
