UC Riverside UC Riverside Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Losing the Center: Madrid, Flamenco, and Contested Urban Spaces Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5g59b82g Author Goldbach, Theresa Margaret Publication Date 2019 License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ 4.0 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE Losing the Center: Madrid, Flamenco, and Contested Urban Spaces. A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Critical Dance Studies by Theresa M. Goldbach June 2019 Dissertation Committee: Dr. Linda Tomko, Chairperson Dr. José Reynoso Dr. Jonathan Ritter Dr. Walter Clark Copyright by Theresa M. Goldbach 2019 The Dissertation of Theresa M. Goldbach is approved: Committee Chairperson University of California, Riverside Acknowledgements I have many families to thank for their love and support throughout the hard work of researching and writing this dissertation. First, I thank my blood family, my mother and my sister Veronica, who accompanied me for part of the research and let me use her cats when I needed them. Mille grazie a Verdiano Pinci e sua famiglia per tutto suo appoggio. I am eternally grateful to my UCR family for guiding me through this process. In particular, I want to thank Linda Tomko for forcing me to think about the meaning of the words I use and not just their sonorous flow. I thank José Reynoso for being part mentor, part therapist, and a constantly reassuring presence. In the Music department, I thank Walter Clark for welcoming me into the world of flamenco musicology. This work owes a huge debt to Jonathan Ritter and his “Music, Memory, and Modernity” seminar. I thank Imani Kai Johnson for introducing me to the work of David Harvey, which changed my scholarship forever. I also thank Anthea Kraut for her kindness and for giving me the opportunity to get my archive fix and read the production notes from two of my favorite movies. Agradezco a Covadonga Lamar Prieto por su perspectivo lingüístico y por mostrándome mi dialecto natal en español (aunque mi acento es todavía inestable). I thank Anusha Kedhar for being awesome: an awesome professor, supervisor, scholar, and role model. I thank Jacqueline Shea-Murphy for challenging me to do better. I thank Katrina Oskie for keeping the department running. I am grateful to the UCR Graduate Students Association and the Center for Ideas and Society for funding to support my research and conference travel. Thank you to Julisa McCoy for loaning me Penny when I needed an emotional support dog. I would not have survived this process iv without all of my friends in the program, who let me crash on couches, cry on shoulders, and complain about everything every step of the way: Christine Şahin, Xiomara Forbez, Cuauhtémoc Peranda, Irvin Gonzalez, Meghan Quinlan, Jen Aubrecht, Anya Nikulina, Kelly Bowker, Rainy Demerson, Dava Hernández, Maïko Le Lay, and Sophia Levine. I also thank all my comrades in the UAW for fighting the good fight. I thank my UNM family, especially Mary Anne Newhall-Santos, for starting me on this journey, and Eva and Marisol and the entire Encinias family for continuing to support my work. I thank Sarah Gonzalez, Dolores Garcia, and Ysabela Trujillo for all their work in the Albuquerque flamenco community. My extended flamenco family spans the globe. In particular, I thank Meira Goldberg for being such a rock star and my idol. I thank Michelle Heffner-Hayes and Erica Ocegueda for being my conference buddies. I thank Alice Blumenfeld for her work to cut out her own path in flamenco and in academia. I owe special props to Gretchen Williams for being an amazing and courageous scholar, I only wish I were as brave as you. I thank Beth Nesbitt for bringing so much flamenco to LA and all of her work to promote the form. I thank every flamenco master I have ever studied with especially Jimmie Kaye Ramos. En España, agradezco a Ana Romero y Joaquín San Juan por responder a todas mis preguntas. También, quiero expresar el honor de estar en el mismo estudio con grandes maestros como El Güito, Cristobal Reyes, y La Uchi. Gracias a Guillermo García por sus recuerdos. Muchísimas gracias a los archivistas del Archivo Regional de la Comunidad de Madrid, del Archivo de Villa de Madrid (especialmente a Mercedes Diego Páez), y del Archivo General de la Administración en Alcalá de Henares. Gracias a todos en Casa Patas, y a Oscar y Alex v por cuidarme en la barra. Gracias a Ivan Vargas, Rosario Toledo, Carmela Greco, José Manuel Alvarez, Alfonso Losa, Claudia Cruz, y Marco Flores por su arte. I must also include my Hollywood bar family. Grazie a tutti di Trastevere Ristorante Italiano, a Daniela Sorgi e Luciana Harper. I extend a special thanks to Luis Sosa for his warmth, guidance, and friendship. I must also include the old (and new) staff of Powerhouse, the subject of that seminar paper and impetus for this work, especially Jim, Tom Stampalia, Tom Billett, and Fernanda Hay. I also thank the old Powerhouse family of regulars especially Jeremiah Graves, Jonny Dee, Art, Wheelz, and Andy Cool. I thank everyone at Boardner’s for giving me space to write, letting me be “that girl at the bar with the books” especially Trisha LaBelle, Simona Gueorguieva, John Stein, Keenan Hanson, Tim Long, Tim Johnson, London Alexander, Chuy Gonzalez, Cameron and even Luke. I also owe a debt of gratitude to Lee Walker, Steve Edwards, and Justin Paul at Elbow Room for another lovely workspace. I thank Stephanie Pierce for bringing me some peace, some yoga, and some awesome abs. Yes, Austin Rainville, I finally wrote Chapter two. Yorlin Madera, hope you enjoy the stories. I owe a very special thanks to Mike Saz for making me think about space and time and the bittersweet resonance of impossible connections. Last but not least I thank my “bar bitches,” all the women who have sat with me in bars around the world, who have saved me from being the only girl at the bar. The list is long: Whitney Angstadt, Genevieve (La Patatita Frita) Guinn, Elizabeth Rodriguez, Leela Landress, Daniael Monzi, Marissa Quintans, Olivia Chacon, Sandra Leija, Nina Pocaro, Yvette Green, Catherine Kresge, Ketrina Gordon, Toni Marie Davidson, vi Shannon Payne, Nikki Malik, Jelena (Yellin’ at ya) Milanovic, Gina Marie, April Goltz, Maria Liot, Ysabela Trujillo, Sarah Gonzalez, Flo Tung, Mishi McCaig, Sandra Ramirez, Mercy Ruiz, Robelene Montes, “crazy” Lisa Morales, the legendary Carocha (Carol Suarez), Caresse Fernandez, Clare Holstein, Lisa Burke, Michelle Allen, Hanna Kim, Meghan Sheppard, Kristal Nissalke, Tina Hunter, Femi Longe, Mollie McCarthy, and Madeline Bridenbaugh. You ladies have held my heart and saved my life many times. I love you all. vii Dedication For Sean Campos and Sheila MacPherson, two beautiful people who died much too soon during the time I was preparing for my research. I am sorry I was not there for either of you as much as I should have been. For Sean, I steal the words of the Smiths and promise that one dreaded sunny day I will meet you at the cemetery gates. For Sheila, I borrow a lyric of a soleá and lament that my Sheila is gone! How will I ever have another Sheila like the one I had? viii ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Losing the Center: Madrid, Flamenco, and Contested Urban Spaces by Theresa M. Goldbach Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Program in Critical Dance Studies University of California, Riverside, June 2019 Dr. Linda Tomko, Chairperson This dissertation undertakes an investigation of specific flamenco places in the urban center of Madrid, Spain, at key points from the early twentieth century through the Franco dictatorship, culminating in the economic crisis of the twenty-first century. I track how such places have negotiated the changing political and economic landscape and how informal flamenco sociality has shifted over the years. Rather than construct an exhaustive linear history of the area, I posthole and wrap my investigations around these different places, events, and phenomena that affected Madrid, presenting a broader layer of general Madrileño history for context. The struggles for places and neighborhoods to maintain a local personality in the face of the encroachment of corporate global forces form the center of my work. In flamenco, the nuance of “the local” becomes even more precise, narrowing from city to neighborhood, to the extent that “the local” in flamenco could be referred to as “the microlocal” to emphasize the degree of geographic ix specificity. This dissertation focuses on the neighborhoods of Lavapiés and Latina and the Plazas Tirso de Molina and Santa Ana, in Madrid, not only for what they reveal about changes in flamenco connected to regional migrations of people and forms but also about ties to larger economic phenomena. The broad research question pursued here is: how have redevelopment and tourism shaped flamenco social life at the local level in Spain in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries? Place, location, and the struggle over urban territory in the face of gentrification and tourism, figure largely in the history of flamenco in Madrid. I use fieldwork conducted in 1996, 1998, 2001, 2013, 2015, and 2017, which involved taking dance classes, attending shows, and hanging out at flamenco bars as well as archival research. I focus on case studies of the dance studio Amor de Dios, bars and tablaos (flamenco dinner theatres) Los Gabrieles, La Soleá, Corral de la Morería, Candela, and Casa Patas. x Table of Contents Overview………………………………………………………………………..……. 1 Situating the Research………………………………………………………………… 4 Methodology…………………………………………………………………………… 13 Quien soy yo: Positioning the Author………………………………………………….