Everything always ended in Candela. Olmo street corner with Olivar Street. Few ABC interviews with a guitarist, singer or dancer did not go through the small bar of Lavapiés, in Madrid. When he received the Princess of Asturias Award for the Arts, Carmen Linares … He remembered the “million times” he heard singing in his little cave of the basement to his compadre Enrique Morente: “Miguel, the owner, tried to throw at 7 in the morning the shout of ‘I sell pajamas!’ or ‘come, nothing is eternal!’, But there was no way ».
«There was a huge hobby. You could see up to twenty cases on the ground. Getting parties, it was nonsense! ”Rafael Riqueni commented on the time when Madrid arrived in other great young guitarists such as Tomatito, Vicente Amigo, Juan Manuel Cañizares or Gerardo Núñez. Everyone joined in the candle to exchange what they learned. The producer Javier Limón, with his ten Grammy awards and his ability to “sing 400 styles of fandangos”, acknowledged that everything owed it to the “thousand nights of learning” that passed there “until dawn.”
Diego ‘El Cigala’ was born next, in the same neighborhood of Lavapiés, and assured that he lived the “last loom of the best stage of singing in Candela, where it was wonderful to find you so many party geniuses … My mother!” Candela, always the candle, as an underground lighthouse of almost everything that happened in the flamenco of the time from the time he opened in 1982 until the death of its owner, Miguel Aguilera, in 2008. The singer remembered the day he met Camarón there : «He entered with a raincoat, a hat and some sunglasses, crossed the bar, went down to the cave and sat alone in a corner. I guess I wanted to go unnoticed. Then Morente arrived and told us: ‘Do not overwhelm him, man, who is going to go.’ But in the end he stayed in a shirt, took the guitar and began to play and sing. I was crazy, petrified. It was a magical night ».
Jacobo Rivera recovers this last interview in ‘Candela, social memory of a flamenco Madrid’ (Altamarea). The essay recounts the forty years of the mythical bar as an excuse to take a tour of a very flamenco city and, above all, for a neighborhood in which, until recently, it was inevitable to cross the song in each corner. However, in 2022 it was announced that the bar closed – recreationally reopened with other owners and the attempt to maintain their spirit – shortly after they made him Casa Pabs and Café de Chinitas.
Candela’s equality
«The difference of Candela with those historical tablaos is that it was inhabited by different tribes. In addition to the flamenco, there were Cuban musicians, squatters, famous and neighbors of a lifetime. Miguel never put anyone over when serving a cane, it doesn’t matter if it was Almodóvar or a stranger. That feeling of equality and shared space, where punk and gypsies were mixed, made it special. He did not have the elitism of some rocks. I met a gypsy from Orense that some nights took the car to come to take something to Candela. He liked it because he could sing and play the guitar quietly, without being professional or looked bad, ”says Rivero, sitting in a Lavapiés cafeteria, he swept he moved in 1997.
The book also makes a tour of the era of the cafes singer at the end of the 19th century and passes through the years of anti -family, which led to the newspaper ‘El Liberal’ to publish, in 1883, that «Flamenco is the cause of 20 by 100 of the crimes of Madrid ». It also recalls the stage of the “flamenco opera”, which made the city the capital of the entertainment industry; of the Love Academy of God, which continues to form the main figures of the dance, and of the Social Okupado Minuesa, where the Cigala gave its first concerts.
We talked about the neighborhood where the great guitarist Ramón Montoya was born and where the main figures in the history of flamenco lived, such as Morente, Phosphory or Tati. That is why Candela began its journey, sharing a place with the Peña Chaqueton that, at first, occupied the cave. The disagreements caused their paths to separate and that Aguilera stayed with the property to make it a place of reference, always with the help of his childhood friend in Granada: Morente.
Camarón’s blessing
Paco de Lucía also passed. The owner’s daughter, Rosa Aguilera, says: «My mother came to clean at 12 noon and they were still celebrating. They sang, danced, drank, laughed. They had a great time ». Rivero says that in Candela an energy germinated that infected a whole generation of musicians and recovers anecdotes like that day that shrimp came out at nine in the morning of the cave and, at the door, after running the voice through the neighborhood, it is He found a multitude of gypsies who threw their children on top to touch and bless them. “He was amazing, magical half,” recalls one of the witnesses.
Morente was the tutor of that atmosphere and Miguel, the guardian of the Grotto. Guitarist José Carbonell Montoyita tells in the book that both were “very friends” and many afternoons played there to play chess in an endearing scene. Once, the singer was in shoes because he was next to his house. “Maybe it came from a great concert and began to talk to the last drunk of the bar, although there were people who had come to talk to him,” explains the journalist.
In his essay, Rivero includes another anecdote of a veteran flamenco of Granada that reflects the atmosphere of the neighborhood very well: «One night we left at four o’clock in the morning of Candela and Enrique took me to a slum to two little streets where there were some boys with Color and rivet ridges for all the clothes. I said: ‘But Enrique, where have you brought me!’ He replied with half a smile: ‘Don’t worry.’ I wasn’t used to being with punkis, but Enrique was delighted.
«If you compare it with those wonderful decades of Candela, Lavapiés has changed and has lost a lot of flamenco heritage, but I would never take it for dead. I have met young people looking for similar caves, even if it does not make it public and is more or less clandestine, to get together and keep that flamenco more or less ‘underground’ », the author emphasizes.
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