This article was produced by National Geographic Traveller (UK).
It’s almost sunset, and the hilltop cave quarter of Sacromonte is just beginning to stir. The summer heat, which has been smothering Granada all day like a weighted blanket, has begun to lift; the heady scent of wisteria hangs on the breeze, and the shaded plazas echo with the meowing of cats and the shouts of playing children. As I walk up the steep cobbled streets, another sound filters in — the plucking of a classical guitar, coming from the open door of a hillside home.
“Sacromonte has a magic of its own,” says guitarist Pepe Romero when I meet him inside. “It was here in the mountains that the Romani people settled. Then the Muslims and Jews, exiled by the Christian authorities, took refuge here in the 16th century. Sacromonte was one of the hotspots where flamenco was born, against this backdrop of oppression. Flamenco began as a lament.”

Carmen de las Cuevas in Sacromonte, translated to Carmen in the Caves, is one of several celebrated flamenco tablaos (venues) in Granada.
Photograph by David Charbit

Everyone is welcome to have a go at the nuevo flamenco, the movement aimed to modernise the dance.
Photograph by David Charbit
Today, Pepe — a spry, charismatic 80-year-old — is one of the world’s most famous classical guitarists. Although he’s from Málaga, his musical journey owes its origins to Granada, after he was captivated by hearing his father playing Francisco Tárrega’s famous guitar piece, Recuerdos de la Alhambra. As we speak, the Alhambra itself — Granada’s famed Moorish-Christian palace, an architectural masterpiece — sits framed beyond Pepe’s balcony, against a shifting canvas of burnt ochre, rose gold and ferrous red in the quickening sunset.
Despite his classical prestige, Pepe’s earliest albums in the late 1950s and early 1960s were flamenco records. “I’ve always been in love with flamenco,” he says. “Its spirit is what we call duende: something like divine inspiration, but not religious — the divinity of all humanity. When you’re in touch with that, you lose fear. Duende takes fear away.”
At Pepe’s urging, I climb further up the hill to see duende in action at Cueva de la Rocío, a flamenco venue in a complex of rock-cut caves. I’m ushered into a tunnel-like room with a barrel ceiling that’s dimly lit by purple light, its rough walls hung with brass cooking pots and family photos. A drummer, singer and guitarist occupy the stage at the end, delivering impassioned songs interspersed with shouts of “Ay!” — the exclamation known as the quejío, the cry of lament.
Through it all, a female dancer in a polka-dot dress improvises a captivating dance, her fingers either clicking rhythmically or clenched in defiant fists, her heels sending up a firecracker chorus of percussive taps from the polished floor.
The spirit of flamenco infuses the artistic life and collective imagination of all of Granada. The labyrinthine alleyways of the Albaicín, the city’s medieval Moorish quarter, house darkly atmospheric clubs like Eshavira, where instrumentalists and singers improvise new fusions of flamenco and jazz in real time, while flamenco-inflected rock bands like Los Planetas have helped bestow on Granada the crown of indie capital of Spain. Flamenco’s hold on Granada transcends even the world of music, though, and can be found in some of the most unexpected places.
The new flamenco
In Realejo, a gritty, centuries-old district south of Sacromonte that was once home to Granada’s Jewish community, a striking mural shows a dark-haired woman with hooped earrings. Her forehead is marked with a bindi — a reference to the origins of the Romani in northern India. La fuerza esta en las raices, reads calligraphic writing next to her. The strength is in the roots.
The mural, like the many others that brighten the elegantly fading buildings in Realejo, is the work of Raúl Ruiz, aka El Niño de las Pinturas (‘The Boy of the Paintings’) — Granada’s most celebrated street artist. I meet Raúl around the corner from the mural in his studio, where every surface is covered in flecks of paint — from the boombox pumping out house tunes, to his hand, which he extends to me in a warm greeting.
“Flamenco and street art share a lot spiritually,” he says between puffs on a roll-up cigarette. “Even though graffiti came from street culture in the US, there’s a lot in common between hip-hop and flamenco. Both have singing, and are very rhythmic — hip-hop has beats, while flamenco…” He taps his feet, snaps his fingers, and emulates percussive flamenco guitar by rapping his hands against his knees. “But the main thing is a shared spirit. Both are an artistic fight. Breakdancing in the Bronx and the Romanis dancing in Sacromonte — it’s not so different.”
Raúl leafs through a photobook of his work, which includes a leonine portrait of legendary gitano singer Camarón de la Isla, and a serene image of virtuoso guitarist Paco de Lucía, whose fusions of flamenco, classical and jazz made him a leading figure in the so-called nuevo flamenco (new flamenco) movement. Most of the images Raúl shows me, he says, no longer exist — removed by the authorities, despite often being commissioned by the owners of the buildings. I decide to go out and see some more of Raúl’s current crop of murals while I’ve still got the chance.
I walk around the Realejo, ticking off Raúl’s pieces as I see them: vibrant paintings of guitarists, violinists, crowds clapping along to flamenco, and children playing in the street. I soon stumble across Mítica, a tattoo studio that also serves as Raúl’s official shop, selling stickers, badges and prints bearing his designs. Lured by the promise of air conditioning, I step inside and meet tattooist and street artist Paco Hidalgo, a tall man with dreadlocks and a thick beard, who tells me the government are clamping down on graffiti.
“The last six months, they’ve had a zero-tolerance policy,” he says. “But the art is a gift we give to the city — the people love it.” I can believe him — the streets of the Realejo are brightened up no end by Raúl’s murals. And a punky, anti-establishment attitude is part of the neighbourhood’s modern character. That much is clear not just from the street art, but from the name of a small square down the road from the tattoo studio: Placeta Joe Strummer, named for the legendary frontman of The Clash, who found in Granada a spiritual home.

Granada’s miradors, or viewpoints, often host impromptu flamenco sessions that everyone is welcome to participate in.
Photograph by David Charbit
One face that I see repeatedly among the painted streets of the Realejo, stencilled onto walls and lampposts, is that of Federico García Lorca, often described as both Granada’s most famous son and Spain’s most popular poet. A famous left-wing figure, he was assassinated by fascist forces in 1936, at the age of 38, and ever since he has been a symbol of Andalucian resistance against oppressive nationalism. He was a particular champion of Granada’s Romani communities — reflected in his most famous work, Gypsy Ballads — and in 1922, helped stage a flamenco festival in the grounds of the Alhambra, which has been credited with popularising the art form. More than anything, Lorca espoused the creative power and meaning of duende, describing it as “a mysterious power that everyone feels, and no philosopher can explain.”
Lorca’s spirit is upheld by many of Granada’s young rap stars, who have made the city an epicentre for a new genre of music that fuses hip-hop and flamenco. Breakout stars include La Zowi and Dellafuente. I meet two others, the duo Pepe y Vizio (aka Pepe Sánchez-Vera Serrano and Vicente Perez Carmona), in the Jardines del Triunfo, a leafy park in central Granada. They’re young, with buzz cuts and beards, in baggy white T-shirts, gold chains and colourful shorts. “Lorca influences all of us artists in Granada,” says Pepe, “partly because the flamenco singers, like Enrique Morente, sang his words.”
It’s refreshing to hear contemporary urban artists unselfconsciously citing the influence of their country’s long-dead and beloved poet — it’s more difficult to imagine British rappers or graffiti artists extolling the virtues of, say, William Wordsworth. But Lorca, as the embodiment of the flamenco spirit, is different — a voice for the voiceless, just like the rappers who Vicente would listen to growing up. When he met Pepe, a flamenco guitarist, they saw the ways in which their two styles could fuse.
“The sounds complement each other, but so do their origins,” Vicente says. “Working classes, poverty, struggle — flamenco and hip-hop are from different countries, but their sentiments are the same.” They’re not the only ones in Granada merging the two genres, and Vicente says that the profusion of flamenco through all aspects of city life is partly responsible. ”The influence of flamenco is everywhere in Granada,” he says. “Music, painting, poetry, cinema — everywhere.”
Then there’s the local accent. Andalucian Spanish is particularly suited to rap: it’s pleasingly sibilant, and the tendency to chop the ends off words creates a consonant-rich cadence that clicks like castanets.
More than anything, for these rap stars — just as for the gitanos of Sacromonte in centuries past — flamenco is a wellspring for the downtrodden, of love, passion and revenge. And duende, of course, which Pepe says is a state of being for Granadinos. “You can feel the duende anytime — it doesn’t matter if you’re practising karate or making a coffee,” he says. “Flamenco is a frame of mind.”
Published in the Jan/Feb 2025 issue of National Geographic Traveller (UK).
To subscribe to National Geographic Traveller (UK) magazine click here. (Available in select countries only).