The history
Camarón and the tablao's history
How a Madrid tavern became a tablao in 1960, why flamenco moved from cafés to stages, and what the sources say about the artists who worked there.
Reserve your flamenco evening ↗From tavern to tablao
Madrid's tourism site says the tablao opened in 1960, in the premises of La Taberna Gitana, which dated from 1949. That puts it at the start of the decade in which tablaos spread across Spain. Wikipedia notes that tablaos developed during the 1960s, replacing the cafés cantantes. A tablao takes its name from the Spanish word tablado, meaning floorboard, and the word also names the raised platform where a dancer performs. Many tablaos also serve drinks, tapas or full meals.
What came before: the café cantante
The café cantante was the main flamenco venue of the 19th century. Wikipedia says Silverio Franconetti opened the first flamenco singer café in Seville in 1881. Competition between cafés helped professional singers emerge and shaped the technique and repertoire of the art. The soleá, for example, had its golden age in the last quarter of the 19th century, when the café cantante was the main stage. Tablaos inherited that role in a new setting, and the stage and the tables around it carried on.
Camarón's years on this stage
Camarón de la Isla was born on 5 December 1950 in San Fernando, in the province of Cádiz. He went to Madrid, and in 1968 became a resident artist at the Tablao Torres Bermejas, where he stayed for twelve years. Madrid's tourism site also says he performed on this stage for twelve years. He died on 2 July 1992 in Badalona, aged 41. Wikipedia credits his partnership with Paco de Lucía with giving flamenco a creative impulse.
The meeting with Paco de Lucía
Camarón met the guitarist Paco de Lucía at Torres Bermejas, and the two went on to work together. Wikipedia counts nine albums recorded together between 1969 and 1977, and says they toured extensively. Paco de Lucía, from Algeciras, opened flamenco to Brazilian, Arabic and jazz influences, and his 1991 recording of Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez brought flamenco guitar into the classical-guitar repertoire. The tablao is remembered in part because that meeting happened in its room.
Other names on the bill
Madrid's tourism site says Manolo Caracol made his debut at the venue in February 1962, and lists José Mercé, La Chunga, El Güito, Fosforito, Mario Maya and Pansequito among the artists who have performed there. It also says the tablao is known to many artists as the Cathedral of Flamenco. Treat the list as the history of the room, since the cuadro on your evening is the one that the operator schedules, and the artists change with the programme.
On screen
The same page says the venue has served as a filming location for the film Camarón and for the television series El tiempo entre costuras. If you recognise the room from a screen, that is the reason. It also means the room has a history that reaches beyond the stage: it has been used to tell stories about flamenco as well as to perform it. The tablao is part of how Madrid remembers the art, and that memory is part of what you see on the walls.
A living tradition
In 2010 UNESCO added flamenco to its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, and says it is passed on through dynasties, families, social groups and flamenco clubs. A tablao show is one place where that tradition meets visitors. The operator states that the programme varies through the season, which suits an art built on improvised variation inside a fixed rhythm, so no two evenings are quite the same.
Sources