Flamenco; although in English it has a single and unambiguous meaning, it has more than one meaning in Spanish.

First, the Diccionario de la Lengua Española tell us that the word is from the Dutch; flaming; (in English: fleming.) Then it gives us several definitions.

1. adj. Natural de Flandes. A native of Flanders

2. adj. Perteneciente o relativo a esta región histórica de Europa.
” – an adjective describing a person or thing that comes from that historic region of Europe.

3. adj. Se dice de ciertas manifestaciones socioculturales asociadas generalmente al pueblo gitano, con especial arraigo en Andalucía.
Said of certain sociocultural manifestations usually associated with the gitano people, and especially having roots in Andalucia.

Then there is also:
9. m. Ave de pico, cuello y patas muy largos, plumaje blanco en cuello, pecho y abdomen, y rojo intenso en cabeza, cola, dorso de las alas, pies y parte superior del pico.
That is to say it is the name of the large white bird with a very long beak, neck and legs, white on the body and with a bright red head, tail, back of the wings, feet and top part of the beak. However, other sources state that a white flamingo is suffering from a dietary deficiency, and any healthy flamingo will be pink all over.

The only connection between the art form and the bird is the fact that the bird migrates between Africa and the swamps of the Coto Doñana west of Sevilla, although the largest flocks are seen at the Lagoon of Fuente de Piedra near Antequera, about 100 kms to the east. Why the bird is called a flamingo, we do not know. Let’s leave that aside, and think about the Flanders thing.

Why a word with the root meaning - a person or thing from Flanders, - should be applied to a form of music, dance and cante from Andalucía, remains obscure. To illuminate the question we need to review some history.

First we can ask: when did the word come to have the meaning of the art form of the gitano people? And when was such an art form created? There are two small literary references that can help here.

The first is the novel by José Cadalso titled Cartas Marruecas (Moroccan Letters). José Cadalso was born in Cadiz in 1741. Educated and widely traveled, Cadalso was a distinguished army officer, but was killed at the age of 41 during the siege of Gibraltar, just before Cartas Marruecas was published. The book is in the form of a series of letters from the Morrocan protagonist (Gazel) to an imaginary ambassador from Morocco (Ben-Beley). In one letter Gazel describes an overnight stay at a rural inn (cortijo) on the road between Cadiz and Sevilla. He describes what we would recognize as a juerga – that is, a party given by flamencos and for flamencos. There is no suggestion that this is an entertainment for the public. From the context we are led to believe that the public is generally aware that gitanos have this form of celebration, and he even refers to the palo being performed (it is a polo, a form which is now considered archaic), in a tone which leaves us with the understanding that his readers will know what this is. But he does not use the word flamenco, except in reference to "Un caballero Flamenco, que se halla en Madrid..." in which reference he is clearly talking about a Flemish gentleman who found himslf in Madrid. Cartas Marruecas was written about 1775, and first published about ten years later.

Los gitanos in this period were struggling to survive in the face of the centuries-long attempt by the Spanish authorities to eliminate them as a separate ethnic and cultural group. Numerous laws were passed which decreed that they were not permitted to work in any occupation other than agriculture, not permitted to ride a horse, but only a mule, not permitted to travel in groups of more than two, and not permitted to carry weapons. The penalties ranged from flogging to death.

At the same time, many gitanos, who had by this time been living and working in Andalucia for a couple of hundred years, had been quietly integrated into the economic life of many Andalucian communities. And they had found a useful niche in service to the state as soldiers in the interminable wars, particularly those concerning the control of Flanders, which lasted from the late sixteenth century until the early eighteenth century. Some gitano families petitioned the Cortes, asking that the long service they had given to the crown in the army in Flanders should be recognized by their exemption from the restrictive anti-gitano laws. Flamencologist Bernard Leblon states that there exists documentary evidence of such a request from the Bustamente, Rocamora, Montoya and Flores families. who procured such a royal warrant in 1602, and had it renewed in 1620 and 1623.

Leblon suggests that “naturally ... people got to calling [these families] los Flamencos – the Flemish – and by the nineteenth century this term was extended to mean gypsies in general ... before it came to designate their characteristic music.”

Certainly it is true that in the early part of the nineteenth century the linguist and Christian missionary George Borrow, in his book “The Zincali: Or An Account of the Gypsies of Spain” reported that gitanos were known as Flemings “in various parts of Spain”. Flemings would translate as flamencos. Borrow, curiously, has nothing to say about the music or dance of the gitanos, other than to mention that, in the evenings in certain cities, young payos would flood into the gitanerias to watch the gypsy girls dancing. The dance he does not call flamenco.

At about the same time, Prosper Merimée was writing the novella "Carmen" which would later be the inspiration for the opera by George Bizet. In the novella there is a scene where Carmen has to extricate Don José, the protagonist, from one of many bad situations. She sardonically chastises him: “There’s a cure for everything when one has for one’s friend a flamenco de roma.” In a footnote Merimée describes the phrase as “a slang term to designate a gypsy” He probably could have more accurately noted that it described a particularly adventurous Gypsy. He also describes a dance concert commissioned by payos in which Carmen is one of the dancers, and notes: "You know, it is the fashion to hire gypsies to go about to parties, to dance the romalis - that is their national dance."

It is generally believed that flamenco music and dance were still largely performed only for private juergas among gitanos until late in the nineteenth century. The British memoirist William Beatty-Kingston, wrote about attending a dance concert in Sevilla in 1868, commissioned by the Captain General of Sevilla and attended by rich payos. There were three female dancers, two of whom were from Triana - the gitano barrio. But the dancers performed seguidillas, jotas, fandangos, and jaleo, only the last two of which would later be considered flamenco.

Thus, it seems that, by the end of the eighteenth century certain prominent gitano families had come to be called los flamencos – the Flemish ones. This use of the word later came to be applied to gitanos in general and the usage continued until the twentieth century. Gitanologist Juan de la Plata cites a report in the newspaper "La Guadalete" concerning a fight that took place between gitano tribes outside Jerez in 1930. The report cited the opinion of one observer, writing "Una de las flamencas hacia el siguiente comentario: ..." (One of the flamencas made the following comment...) There was no suggestion that the woman was a flamenco artist ... she was a gitana, and another word for that was flamenca.

When, in the late nineteenth century the music and dance of the gitano community came to be recognized and appreciated by the non-gitano public, it took the name of those who had created it - los flamencos. The famed Sevillano folklorist Demofilo (Antonio Machado y Alvarez) in 1881 published an extensive collection of letras under the title “Colleccion de Cantos Flamencos” and, a decade later American travel writer Katherine Lee Bates, visiting the feria de Sevilla in 1898 wrote that "the Flamenco dances are directly seductive" and does not find it necessary to explain what Flamenco dances are. British writer Laura Alexandrine Smith in 1899 published “Through Romany Songland” in which she cites folklorist Alma Strettell: “The Flamenco song proper, with its strange, plaintive air, and often elaborate guitar accompaniment, is intended to be sung less by the people than by the 'professional' singers,—either a gypsy or some one taught by them. These singers collect large audiences at the country fairs, or in the little taverns in the gypsy quarter of the towns. Some of them have made a great name in Spain by their improvisations and their expressive singing of these strange lyrics. Many of the Flamenco songs, like the Spanish popular ones, are ‘bailable‘ (danceable),—that is, their music is that to which the national dances are performed,—and hence to the charm of the Flamenco song is added the charm of the weird and graceful Flamenco dance; for the dancing of the gypsy women especially has ever been famous in Spain.” By the end of the nineteenth century it is clear that flamenco has come to be the name of the music and dance of the gitanos of Andalucia.

The much revered Andalusian political activist and historian Blas Infante (1885-1936), in his work Orígenes de lo Flamenco y secreto del cante jondo (1929) advanced a theory that the word flamenco was based on a corruption of an Arabic phrase fellha mengu which was said to mean fugitive peasant. There is no evidence to support this view, and a number of reasons to suggest that it is false. Firstly, as we have seen, the word seems not to have come to be used with the meaning of gitano until the early nineteenth century, while the use of Arabic as a lingua franca in Spain had lapsed a couple of hundred years earlier. Secondly, initially, the word flamenco was used by gitanos to describe themselves, and it seems improbable that they would have referred to themselves in this way, as fugitive peasants. There is no evidence in the literature for the use of such a phrase.

Blas Infante, sadly, did not survive to further develop his idea, being summarily executed, along with hundreds of others when the Army of Africa, under General Francisco Franco, entered Sevilla in 1936 at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War.

Once, during a visit to Sevilla several years ago, I was sitting on a bench in the Jardines de Murillo, after breakfast, reading El Pais, trying to expand my spanish. A middle aged Sevillano sat next to me and we exchanged greetings. He asked me what I was doing there and I said I had come to take dance classes with Concha Vargas. After some general conversation I asked him: "¿Conoce algunos flamencos?" He shook his head; "¡No, No!" By using the word I had meant - people who are flamenco artists, but I think in his reply he meant - gitanos. It is a popular misconception that the Spanish are as interested in gitanos, as are non-Spanish flamenco aficionados, and he let me know that he had no interest in, or perhaps affection for, gitanos.

Flamenquito 2007 (revised July 2008)

Sources:
Diccionario de la Lengua Española; Real Academia Española, http://buscon.rae.es/draeI/
José Cadalso, Cartas Marruecas, Piferrer, Barcelona, 1796
George Borrow, The Zincali, or An Account of the Gypsies of Spain, John Murray, London, 1841
William Beatty-Kingston, Music and Manners: Personal Reminiscences and Sketches of Character, Chapman and Hall, London. 1887
Laura Alexandrine Smith, Through Romany Songland, D Stott, London, 1898
Katherine Lee Bates, Spanish Highways and Byways, MacMillan, New York, 1900
Prosper Merimée, Carmen, translated by George Burnham Ives, Putnam's Sons, New York, 1903
Bernard Leblon, Gypsies and Flamenco, University of Hertfordshire Press, 1995
Juan de la Plata, Los Gitanos de Jerez, Catedra de Flamencologia, Jerez. 2001