Barcelona, June 2022.
Late, near-summer flowers are wilting in record heat in Spain, the hottest in 20 years.
Being Brazilian living in Nazoropa® and, therefore, Resistant to the Heat Que For (which many gringos think we are, as holders of a kind of Ecuadorian superpower) is legend.
Come to the desert Mediterranean of pine trees twisted by tramontanas* and dusty rosemary bushes and tell me. Everything is prototypically beautiful, but the soil, people, that once had similarities with our Atlantic Forest, but good today appears dry, impenetrable. A sigh doesn’t even fit in his burning chest.
Well, as I said, come and I’ll take you along the Catalan coastal paths and you’ll tell me, drops salads running down the disfigured forehead: well, popcorn (palomiteshere), what a heat of c, let’s go back to Bahia.
In the city, the lady next to me waits to cross the street (noon shiny asphalt, more heat, ambulances). She shakes her white fan with red polka dots, very Andalusian, violently, she would say, desperate. I take a little step towards you to enjoy the breeze. That life (over)lives in the details, Veríssimo already said in facebook chains.
(someone else still uses Facebook)
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Fans, that obligatory Spanish symbol, like bulls (hmm), paella (errr) and ̶ ̶a̶ ̶S̶h̶a̶k̶i̶r̶a̶ ̶s̶e̶m̶ ̶P̶i̶q̶u̶é̶. In our dreams, the españolas flamenco dancers adorn their hair with flowers, say ‘olé’ and hold a fan in their hands.
A factual fact is that, in the Spanish summer, benches with copies of beveled paper or cheap fabric attached to a hinged plastic base are everywhere.
A Spanish friend teaches me how to quickly open and close it, à la capricious Marie Antoinette. Proud and obsessive-compulsive, I drive her crazy with my incessant vraaa vraaaa vraaaaa.
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Around the 15th century, the fan arrived in Europe by the Portuguese and Jesuits from the East – although there are those who defend the idea that its origin in reality is North Africa, considering that the Egyptians had been fanning themselves for a long time. longer blablabla – and becomes, at first, a luxury item.
Wielded by men and women as a symbol of status, it was preferably made with sweet and expensive materials such as silk, lace, feathers, and gold fibers. Sometimes signed by famous artists. Small or outrageously large, rigid (daddad) or collapsible. There were commemorative ones, with floral motifs, with picturesque scenes, birds, etc.
From there until reaching the Locomía of my childhood in the 1980s, many waters rolled.
(I was perverted by ketchupari and his pansexxy ibicenca lechiic choreography as a child)
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In the 18th and 19th centuries, flying its wings in European courts, the handling of the fan acquired connotations of a kind of rudimentary Tinder, with elaborate codes for communication between lovers.
There are countless ‘dictionaries’ or interpretations out there, but the basic language could look like this:
Fan fanned on the chest: I’m single, I’m free, come to me (especially if you show the side of the drawing – if it’s the other way around, it can mean ‘no’ )
Closed fan touching the left cheek: no
Closed fan on the right cheek: yea
Open fan covering the face, with the eyes uncovered: I want you, mammon!
Open fan on the chest: come with me mammon!
Shaking fast: you like me mammon
Waving slowly: nah. Indifference. Or, staged with the appropriate voluptuousness and gaze, equals to-facinhx. (I know, this is getting complicated, but, guys, when did it become clear?!)
Closed fan in the heart: I love you.
Fan over the lips: kiss me kiss me
Closing the fan abruptly: it could be a sign of hatred or impatience.
Etc., and everything in reverse.
The importance of the fan in Spain was such that, in the 19th century, the Real Fábrica de Abanicos was created in Valencia, with the consequent union consecration of the masters. abaniqueros.
Today, most of tallers of fans in Spain is now concentrated in the municipality of Aldaya (or Aldaia in Valencia), in Valencia, where there is even a museum dedicated to the subject.
Since the days of portraits of the fanning nobility made by Goya, Zuloaga and others, the fan has become pop and today shines as a national souvenir alongside flamenco dolls, bottles of bleed shaped like a bull (ayy, bullfighting is still a hit in some strongholds) and Gaudí’s geckos.
Furthermore, it is a mandatory accessory for flamenco dancing, along with hats, flowers, polka dot dresses, mantillas and exuberant ruffle skirts.
Learning to handle it is a wonderful and complex art (let me say it, I kill mosquitoes more than I dance bunito in my sevillanasaccompanied by a group of señoras mayors agile and graceful).
And, returning to the topic of heat, it is useful. I have three myself: one I won from a pre-pandemic music festival, another I bought in Seville (for two hard, not you create) and another from a stool on the bustling Plaza Catalunya metro in Barcelona.
I leave here a tutorial of a flamenco teacher who enchants me. take your fangs ya dance (or turn on**), mammons!
*north wind blowing from the sea off the coast of Catalonia and southern France
**flirt
