Resilient Women: Constructing Female Identity in Spanish Flamenco

In November of 2010 flamenco music and dance was declared as UNESCO Cultural Immaterial Heritage of the Humanity. Starting from the very humble beginnings of an underclass entertainment, flamenco has been an integral part of Spanish history and culture for nearly two centuries, becoming one of the most visible symbols of Spanish identity. Women artists have always played the essential, but underappreciated role, as performers, creators and transmitters of a tradition deeply rooted in the local Andalusian culture of Southern Spain. 

     This study addresses the marginalization and social stigma that Spanish flamenco female artists suffered from the nineteenth through the most of the twentieth century for being women and flamenco performers. They were constrained to live in a marginalized world that carried a stigma of disrespectability, of ill repute with connotations of prostitution. 

       The study relies on the most recent progressive scholarship on flamenco in Spanish and English, borrowing from scholars in anthropology (Bordieu), sociology (Gerhard Steingress, Cristina Cruces Roldán and Timothy Mitchell) and research in feminist anthropology and gender studies (Cowan, Kapchan, and Butler).

       Using the multidisciplinary approach the study argues that in spite of the negative social perception of female flamenco artists in Spain of the 19^th century and the first half of the 20^th century, being stereotyped as prostitutes, wild and shameless, flamenco art actually had liberating effect for women bringing them to the public sphere and allowing them to negotiate their gender identity.