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A finca is a country house, a farm or an estate, often with an attached plantation. However, it also often just refers to a large plot of land. In the tourism industry, finca usually refers to a holiday home in a rural location.

The three essential elements of flamenco are: singing, dancing and playing the guitar.

The public life of flamenco began towards the end of the 18th century with the cante. Gypsies in Andalusia brought something new to the public and found an audience for it. These were poetic texts that were sung a cappella, i.e. without instrumental accompaniment – in other words, without a guitar and without dancing. This was the first, original ‘cante jondo’ (deep, heartfelt singing) and was at best accompanied rhythmically with the means of the son, i.e. by clapping hands, tapping the knuckles of the hands on the table or chair, stamping the feet or snapping fingers.

The repertoire of the first cantaores (flamenco singers) was expanded to include songs of a more cheerful character and content, which could now be heard alongside the cante jondo at parties and juergas (more or less spontaneous, informal social gatherings). They were accompanied by the usual musical and rhythmic instruments of Andalusian folklore at the time (bandurria, lute, mandolin, violin, shell drum and castanets) and with them, female dancers also found their way into flamenco. For a long time, flamenco dance was a women’s dance. The bailaora (flamenco dancer) originally danced barefoot or only with heelless, slipper-like shoes on her feet.

The impressive foot technique that seems to be so typical of flamenco dance was not until well into our century. The zapateo (foot technique) characterised emphatically violent, powerful body movements and the dance of men. When men later began to dance flamenco, they brought this style of dancing with them. Famous female dancers such as Carmen Amaya (1913-1963) adopted the male dance characteristics and in particular the foot technique and integrated them into the female dance. This is how the masculine became feminine in flamenco – a constant challenge for every female flamenco dancer to this day! The dance, the most striking of the many elements of flamenco, attracts the greatest number of people interested in flamenco and earns the loudest applause, which explains why many people nowadays talk about flamenco even though they mean flamenco dance.

As early as the middle of the 19th century, the guitar was the musical instrument par excellence when it came to accompanying flamenco singing or dancing. The guitarist’s need to demonstrate his skills led to the first soloists performing on the flamenco guitar as early as the second half of the 19th century. Even if the solo playing of the virtuosos is fascinating, it must be emphasised that the tocaor (flamenco guitarist) finds his real challenge in the accompaniment of dance and song. The guitar accompaniment comprises 2 parts: the rhythmic and melodic support of the cantaor and the falsetas. These are solo melody lines of the guitarist between the individual parts of the song, which connect and extend them, whereby they must adhere to the leitmotif of the respective palo (style, genre of the respective flamenco piece).

Clapping is an authentic element of flamenco, and probably one of the oldest. Together with other acoustic expressions that can be produced with the hands and feet, such as finger snapping, tapping, stamping, it emphasises the rhythm of the singing. At the same time, it can drive the rhythm forward, dampen it, hold it back or even prepare it. The palmas thus have an important dual function. They are a rhythm element and an element of the jaleo (shouts of encouragement from the group, such as ‘¡olé!’, ‘¡vamos!’, ‘¡arsa!’…). In addition to the two basic forms of the palmas claras (bright clapping) and palmas sordas (muffled clapping), there are a multitude of variations. Other melody and accompanying instruments of modern flamenco include the flute and cajón.