Carmen Amaya

Carmen Amaya, the dancer and singer from Barcelona, earned a lasting place among the foremost and most formative flamenco artists of the twentieth century. Although her voice drew attention, her dancing commanded even greater recognition, and the distinctive steps she created have shaped the approach of succeeding generations of young flamenco students across Spain long after her lifetime. Born November 2, 1913, into a gypsy family in Barcelona, she spent her early years in the Somorrostro district, then an impoverished slum that has since become an upscale beachfront neighborhood. Lacking any formal dance instruction, she absorbed flamenco traditions from relatives, notably her father, the guitarist El Chino, and her aunt La Faraona. Additional knowledge came from Bar de Manquet, a working-class gathering place for flamenco, where she received her first paid dancing engagement in 1924 at the age of ten. At that venue she met Escudero el Gato, also known as Escudero the Cat, the celebrated Madrid-born gypsy dancer and brother of guitarist El Pelao Viejo, whose movements left a deep impression on her developing style. She attained celebrity status throughout Spain while still in her teens and reached wider renown during her twenties. At twenty-two, when the Spanish Civil War erupted in 1936, Amaya left the country to avoid the fighting. During the eleven years she remained abroad she performed in New York City, Paris, and Lisbon, Portugal, and appeared in Cuba, Uruguay, Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, and Chile. Such international stature led U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to invite her to dance at the White House in 1944; during the same decade she also performed for British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. She came back to Spain in 1947, after the civil conflict had ended and the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco, known as El Generalíssimo, had taken firm hold, remaining in power until his death in 1975. Over the course of her career Amaya appeared in numerous films made in Spain, Mexico, and Hollywood, including La Hija de Juan Simón in 1935, María de la O in 1936, Seda, Sangre y Sol in 1942, Sueños de Gloria and Knickerbocker Holiday in 1944, See My Lawyer in 1945, and Los Tarantos in the early 1960s. She died of kidney failure at age fifty on November 19, 1963, in Barcelona, where she was buried. In 1999 author Paco Sevilla published the biography Queen of the Gypsies: The Life and Legend of Carmen Amaya. Into the twenty-first century her grandniece Omayra Amaya has continued teaching flamenco dance while discussing her grand-aunt’s legacy on her website.