CUBA: Spain’s Flamenco Icon Returns to His Beloved Island

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Jul 23 2004 (IPS) - Legendary Spanish flamenco dancer and choreographer Antonio Gades died lamenting that he was not able to do more for the Cuban revolution, as indicated by a letter published here Friday, just hours after his ashes were brought to this Caribbean island nation in accordance with his last wishes.

”I want you to know that the only thing I am sorry about is not having done more for the revolution,” Gades wrote to the head of the Cuban armed forces, Gen. Raúl Castro (President Fidel Castro’s brother), on Jul. 14, in the letter published Friday by Granma, the official daily of Cuba’s ruling Communist Party.

”My wife Eugenia and my daughters María, Tamara and Celia, in accordance with my last wishes, will deliver my ashes to you. Do with them what you deem best,” states the letter.

Gades, who died of cancer in Madrid Tuesday at the age of 67, did not want any honours to be bestowed on him, and merely asked that his ashes be taken to Cuba, the country that he had described as ”the port” of his life, the place to which he always returned.

His last wish was carried out Thursday night.

In the letter, Gades said he had never thought he would have the honour of being Raúl Castro’s ‘compadre’ (a term that denotes an especially close friendship and near-kinship ties), and gave cheers (Viva!) to Fidel Castro and to ”our PCC” – the Cuban Communist Party, to which he belonged.

Although Gades’ love for Cuba, his close ties with Raúl Castro, and his regular, and occasionally lengthy, visits to the island were no secret, little was known about his strong links with Cuba’s socialist authorities.

The great flamenco dancer was born Antonio Esteve Ródenas on Nov. 16, 1936 in Elda, a village in the province of Alicante, Spain, into a humble family. His father, a bricklayer, was a Communist, and had fought to defend the Spanish Republic against the fascist troops of Gen. Francisco Franco (who ruled Spain with an iron fist from 1939 to 1978).

At the age of 11 he dropped out of school to help support his family, and worked a variety of jobs – as a messenger-boy in a photo study, in the printing works of the Madrid newspaper ABC, and as a dancer in a cabaret, where he was spotted at age 15 by flamenco dancer Pilar López, who invited him to join her troupe.

Within just a few years, Gades had danced on many of the world’s leading stages, while forging a unique choreographic style of flamenco dancing which was showcased in films like ‘Carmen’ by Spanish director Carlos Saura.

For his renditions of works like ‘El amor brujo’ (Bewitched Love, or Love, the Magician) he was described by Spanish writer Caballero Bonald as ”the most universal of our dancers, while at the same time the most completely Spanish of our flamenco dancers.”

His choreography has been preserved for posterity in the films ‘Bodas de sangre’ (Blood Wedding), ‘Carmen’ and ‘Fuenteovejuna’.

He was director of the Spanish National Ballet and collaborated with the Cuban National Ballet.

Gades first danced in Cuba in 1975, presenting his version of ‘Blood Wedding’. In the mid-1990s, when Cuba was in the grip of its worst economic crisis in half a century, he returned to perform Fuenteovejuna.

Before he died this week, Gades had not danced for years. He split his time between Spain and Cuba, always living near the sea, another of his great loves.

Last November, he arrived in Cuba by sea, after crossing the ocean from Spain on his sailboat, named Luar 040 (Luar is Raul backwards; 040 was the identification number of a Cuban Communist leader, Abelardo Colomé Ibarra, in the guerrilla army headed by Fidel Castro, which overthrew dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959).

”I used to live in Spain and visit Cuba a lot; now I live in Cuba and visit Spain,” he once told a Spanish TV station in an interview from Havana.

Fidel Castro decorated him with Cuba’s highest distinction, the José Martí Order, on Jun. 5.

Gades’s ashes will be buried alongside the remains of the martyrs of the revolution, Granma reported.

”In recognition of his exceptional artistic and human qualities and his dedication to the revolution,” his ashes will be buried in the II Frente Oriental Frank País Mausoleum, which is currently being restored, according to the newspaper.

The mausoleum, located at the eastern tip of the island, contains the remains of combatants who fell in the guerrilla war led by Castro.

For now, Gades’ ashes have been placed in the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, where they will ”remain under the close watch of his faithful friend” Raúl Castro until they are transferred to the mausoleum, said the newspaper report.

The cremation took place in a private ceremony Wednesday in Madrid, in the presence of only family members and several Cuban diplomats. It was immediately announced that the ashes would be taken to Havana, where they arrived without any prior announcement or press coverage.

Besides his love for Cuba and the sea, Gades left behind a Foundation in Spain to keep his artistic legacy alive and support and disseminate Spanish dance traditions, especially flamenco. ”We are not going to say farewell weeping,” said Cuba’s prima ballerina Alicia Alonso.

Gades and Alonso danced together in 1978 in ‘Ad Libitum’, a fusion of flamenco and classical ballet to the beat of the Cuban tumbadora or conga drum especially created for them by Cuban choreographer Alberto Méndez.

Alonso, the director of the Cuban National Ballet, dedicated to Gades the first performance of ‘La magia de la danza’ (The Magic of Dance) – a gala in homage to 40 years of work by the Cuban Interior Ministry’s Centre for Technical Research and Development.

”I never felt like an artist, only like a simple ‘miliciano’ dressed in olive green, with a rifle in my hand, to always be at your orders, wherever, whenever and however,” Gades told President Castro after receiving the José Martí Order.