It’s my last full day in Denia and today there’s a helpful development for my reorientation to life back in strike-riven Blighty. Spanish air traffic controllers are on strike, the sun’s lost to leaden skies and it’s pissing down. But I can’t complain.

I came here a month ago wondering if I’d done the right thing. But despite initial reservations about jumping on board a holiday for older people, I’ve enjoyed it. There have been bright blue skies virtually every day and Denia’s a lovely, friendly town with an abundance of interesting things to see and do.

I’ve joked about the hotel, referring to it as the home, to meal times as feeding hour and to lights out when matron says etc. But that was rooted in what I’d feared before coming and it’s not been like that at all. A few of the evening activities in the bar are but they’re infrequent and aren’t compulsory, and those who participate enjoy them, so good for them if not me. There are old timers like me here, but it’s a large hotel and it’s for anyone, popular with Spanish people and various other nationalities who’ve come here to cycle, walk and enjoy the many other delights of Denia and its surrounding area, some of which I’ve posted about here.

Carmen Amaya

I ended my first online dairy with music and have decided to this time, and probably will next time too. (I’ve assigned use of the word ‘blog’ to the bin from here on in, preferring ‘online diary’. It’s such an ugly word).

This time it has to be flamenco and I can’t think of anyone better than Carmen Amaya, pictured at the top of this post, an acclaimed dancer from the Roma community considered to be one of the greatest flamenco artists of all time. Her energetic and passionate performances made her a star in the 1940s and 1950s and she continues to be celebrated as an icon of flamenco culture, although she died too soon in 1963.

She was born in 1913 in Somorrostro, at the time a run down area on the outskirts of Barcelona. Back then, at the age of only four, she would accompany her father, Micaela Amaya Moreno, singing and dancing her way around the streets of El Paralelo and Las Ramblas, while he played guitar. They’d often keep going until dawn.

From these humble beginnings, which would have quite rightly had social services in a spin these days, word got around and, years later, she became the first ever woman capable of the high speed footwork previously only the preserve of the best male dancers. She was christened ‘La Capitana’ by her fans.

In a subsequently stellar career she performed and was lauded all over the world, even in front of Winston Churchill and our late Queen Elizabeth. After a performance in London, for which they’d both managed to get tickets, they’d stuck around to greet and congratulate her. A day or so later the Times published a piece about their meeting, which was captioned ‘Two queens face to face’.

It saddens me to think that, coming sixty years after her death, she’ll never know that she got to feature and be honoured in the last post of the online holiday diary of an old bloke from Devon.

Until the next one.

Hasta la vista!

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