History of Tablao de Carmen: Barcelona Since 1988
Poble Espanyol: The Start of a Flamenco Story
Our tablao’s story actually began decades before it opened its doors. It was 1929. Barcelona had dressed up to host the International Exposition once again, after its first turn in the city back in 1888. That first time, the star setting was Ciutadella Park; in 1929, it was Montjuïc. There, palaces and pavilions went up — the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion, considered one of his masterpieces, the Palace of Agriculture, today home to the Teatre Lliure, as well as Plaça d’Espanya, the Palau Nacional (home to the National Art Museum of Catalonia), and the Magic Fountain. Countless buildings that today form part of the city’s most recognizable skyline and have become must-see stops for anyone visiting.
One of the Exposition’s most original structures was the Spanish Pavilion, known today as Poble Espanyol. The site recreated the essence of Spain’s traditional villages, divided into four zones: south, north, Mediterranean, and central. It was in the southern zone, the Andalusian Quarter, that Andalusian Week was held in June 1930. There, in the Patio del Farolillo, a very young Carmen Amaya arrived with her family to dance before King Alfonso XIII. The newspaper La Vanguardia devoted a special feature to the event, with photographs that captured what that flamenco encampment of the Amaya family looked like. Andalusian Week became one of the great meeting points between Andalusian and Catalan culture — Barcelona, by then, already had a flamenco scene that rivaled Madrid’s or Seville’s.
Begur: Where a Great Friendship Took Root
Carmen Amaya was recognized as a major artist from her very first steps — in Barcelona, Madrid, and Paris. When the Spanish Civil War broke out, Carmen and her whole family fled to Portugal, where they found success and used the chance to sail overseas, taking up a contract at the Teatro Maravillas in Buenos Aires. From there, fame followed them through Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, and the United States over the next eleven years.
Carmen returned to Spain in 1947, by then a star who had conquered the stages of Latin America and the United States. She toured Europe and, in 1951, married guitarist Juan Antonio Agüero from Santander, who, from the moment he joined her company, always played for her dancing. A few years later, in 1961, after being diagnosed with untreatable, irreversible kidney failure that made travel difficult and limited her ability to dance, she and her husband bought a farmhouse on the Costa Brava: Mas Pinc, in Begur. They settled there, enjoying the area and performing until August 1963, three months before she died at home that November.
It was during those two years in Begur that Carmen and Juan Antonio struck up a friendship with Sunchy Echegaray — one of the future founders of Tablao de Carmen, then a neighbor from the village next door, a devoted flamenco enthusiast, and an admirer of Carmen’s since childhood.
Carmen died on 19 November 1963 from her kidney condition. Once widowed, Juan Antonio Agüero withdrew to El Molinás, an abandoned house in the mountains near Colera, devastated by the loss of Carmen. For several years, the only reason he left El Molinás was to visit her grave in Bagur. Few people knew where to find him. Sunchy would visit him from time to time, or receive him when he came to Bagur, sharing in the sadness and emptiness Carmen had left behind. Over time, what began as a friendship between Sunchy and Juan Antonio turned, after four years, into marriage. They wed at the Monastery of Sant Cugat in 1967, and a year later had twin daughters, Mila and Mimo.
1988: Opening Night of an Everlasting Tablao
Two more decades went by. In the late 1980s, Poble Espanyol was restored to revive nightlife in the area ahead of the Barcelona Olympics. New music venues sprang up, and that’s when Tablao de Carmen was born.
The empty lot next to the Patio del Farolillo, where that milestone in Catalan flamenco history had taken place, sat unused. The people behind the Poble Espanyol revival wanted a flamenco tablao in its Andalusian quarter. The idea of opening one won over a group of Barcelona-based entrepreneurs, who commissioned the design and decor from Sunchy Echegaray — who, besides being a devoted flamenco enthusiast and Carmen’s personal friend, had spent her whole career in interior design.
That’s how Sunchy came on board as a founding partner. There was no question about the name: Tablao de Carmen, in tribute to the greatest dancer of all time — a Barcelona native, no less — who had danced in that very spot: once the Patio del Farolillo, today the Patio de Carmen, our patio.
On 23 November 1988, Tablao de Carmen opened its doors for its first flamenco show, and it has kept this art alive without interruption for the past 38 years (save for the year and a half it closed in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic). Tablao de Carmen made an immediate mark on Spain’s flamenco map: the headline names on opening night were La Negra Montoya and La Cañeta on cante and dance, Pepe Habichuela and José Luis Postigo on guitar, and María Vargas on dance. Since then, our stage has hosted great artists both at the start of their careers and in their prime: Eva Yerbabuena, Sara Baras, Mario Escudero, Angelita Vargas, La Faraona, La Tana, Paloma Fantova, Juan Ramírez, Chicuelo, Miguel Poveda, Rosalía, and El Yiyo. The tablao’s spirit remains unchanged: a place where master craftsmen meet enthusiasts and those taking their very first steps in el arte jondo — flamenco’s deepest art form.
