On Monday, Rosalía gave the first of her four concerts in Madrid as part of the LUX Tour. It was a night in which not only the music and the show on stage shone, but also the emotional speech she delivered just before performing “Mio Cristo piange diamanti,” in which she spoke of her connection to the capital through a very special place: Casa Patas.
“Good evening, Madrid. How are we tonight? I’m so happy to be here. […] I’ve been coming here to Madrid for over a decade, and it’s a city I love dearly and have many memories of. In fact, I once came to sing at Casa Patas, and I remember feeling that magic there, like nowhere else. […] The twists and turns of life—it’s really powerful,” she said, visibly moved.
That performance, back in 2016, left a special mark on the artist, who 10 years later still remembers it with great emotion. She does so every time she recalls her time at what was once one of the capital’s most legendary temples of flamenco.
Rosalía’s concert at Casa Patas
Proof of this is an interview broadcast on TVE’s La 2, in which the flamenco singer Miguel Poveda asked her the following: “Remind us, Rosalía, of the feelings you had when you entered that legendary Madrid venue, Casa Patas.”“The time I performed there,” she replies, “is the time I think I’ve felt the most at ease and the most connected in my life while giving a concert.”
“I was so intimidated by the idea of singing at a place like that that I said , ‘I’m going to forget that I’m here, because if I keep thinking about what this means to me…’,” “You couldn’t sing, ” Poveda adds. “Impossible. So the fact that I forgot allowed me to let it go.”
The feeling was mutual, as one post put it: “Rosalía performed, alongside Raúl Refree, at the García Lorca Hall of the Casa Patas Foundation in 2016. Those of us who were there that night will never forget it. And neither will she.”
A tablao lost to COVID-19
Casa Patas was one of Madrid’s flamenco venues that closed its doors for good in the months following the outbreak of COVID-19, as would eventually happen to Candela (though for different reasons), after more than three decades dedicated to flamenco.
Artists of the stature of Camarón de la Isla, Diego ‘El Cigala’, José Mercé, Paco de Lucía, Sara Baras, Joaquín Cortes, Miguel Poveda himself, Niña Pastori, and Tomatito have graced its stage.
