What a Flamenco Show in Granada Did to Me That I Was Not Prepared For

Growing up in the United States, I was taught that boys do not cry. I want to be clear that this is not an indictment of my parents or how they raised me. It is just a deeply embedded cultural belief that masculinity is a certain kind of hardness, and that hardness has to be maintained at all times. I do not think it is entirely toxic. I think it is mostly just men who were never taught how to access their own emotions, and so they never did.

I can probably count on two hands the number of times I have cried in the last twenty years.

Two of those times were when my daughters were born.

One was in York Minster, where I was overcome by something I still cannot name. An ethereal feeling I have only come close to once, in Canterbury Cathedral. In Canterbury I felt the emotion rise. In York I lost the fight completely. I sobbed. I am still not entirely sure why, and I have stopped trying to explain it.

The most recent time was in Granada. At a flamenco show.

I want to set the scene. I had walked in stressed. My kids were with me, the show had not started yet, and I was doing the mental arithmetic of how long I could keep two small children quiet before something went sideways. There was also a group of young German students in the room, probably high school or early college age, who thought my daughters were adorable and kept them loosely entertained while we waited. I was grateful for that. I was mostly just ready to survive the experience and get out.

Then it started.

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The first performer was a solo guitarist. Quiet, somber, and far more emotionally loaded than I expected. You could feel the room shift.

The second was a female singer with a voice so deep and commanding that it genuinely caught people off guard. I heard a few nervous laughs, the kind that come out when something surprises you and your body does not know what else to do. I saw a few of her classmates respond with the kind of look that says, without saying anything, have some respect. The room settled.

The third performer was a young man, maybe early twenties, with an intensity and a stage presence that felt far older. That was the moment I realised there was a story being told. I could make out fragments of what the singer was saying, but she was singing so operatically that meaning kept slipping away from me. It did not matter. The story was coming through anyway.

And then the female dancer took the stage.

I cannot fully describe what happened in that room. I looked down the row at my wife, my dad, my stepmother, and my kids, and every single one of them had the same expression. Completely still. Completely present. Something in all of us released at the same moment, this strange mixture of excitement and relief and joy and something else entirely that I do not have a word for.

I started crying. I tried very hard not to. I was embarrassed, if I am being honest. Even writing this out I feel slightly ridiculous. But the tears kept coming and eventually I stopped fighting them.

By the time it ended, about an hour later, I felt as spent as the dancers looked. Whatever part of my soul needed that experience, it had been found and fed.

I am not a naturally emotional person. My upbringing did not leave much room for big feelings. But something about being in an environment that does not require me to keep all of that locked away has opened up parts of me I genuinely did not know were still there.

I would recommend flamenco to anyone. I cannot promise yours will be what ours was. I suspect not every show carries that weight. But the kind of thing that can make a grown man cry in a room full of strangers, quietly, while trying to pretend he is fine, is worth seeking out. Whatever that does for your soul, I think it is worth the discovery.

Give Palacio Flamenco in Granada a look if you make it to Granada!

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