Volume 7 (2019) ISSN 1751-7788 Romance cartographies: flamenco articulations of queer spaces in urban Andalusia Ian Biddle Newcastle University, UK A first intermedio … en medio de un ambiente delicioso, de mar, fonógrafos y de cuadros cubistas, te saludo y te abrazo. 1 Silence. Then, slowly, distant birdsong becomes audible. Long panning shot: blue sky cut by two tall cypresses. The camera pans down into a small square in a cemetery in Barcelona. The square is flanked by the traditional stacked tombs, buried into deep walls, festooned with flowers, photographs, trinkets and other mementos of dead loved ones. As the camera pans down, the floor of the small square is revealed, a dusty sandy surface floor over paved bricks, parched by the hot Spanish sun. A woman appears from the far right-hand corner, in traditional Andalusian dress, fluttering a fan in the heat with her right hand. She makes her way uncertainly into the square, left hand on hip, and sways her hips slowly. She saunters over to the wall on the left of the shot, slowly checking some tombs as she passes, walking towards the camera. As the camera closes in on her, we see she is wearing a mantilla or black lace head scarf over a peineta or ornamental comb: traditional Andalusian dress. Yellow flowers emerge from under the mantilla. Slowly, respectfully, she surveys more tombs, as if looking for someone. She continues to waft the fan swiftly, nervously, in a manner close to ritual. She wears the demeanour of a woman de luto riguroso, in deep mourning. 1 Her facial expression changes and she raises her left hand, as she finds someone she knows, and nods, smiles and whispers something inaudible. Then another name catches her attention. She makes the sign of the cross respectfully, again intoning something, almost like an automaton, gently and respectfully closing her eyes. Suddenly she closes the fan and clutches it in both hands, raises her head upwards and begins to sing a tentative quejío (the opening ‘ay’) of a slow and declamatory version, in the style of a palo seco (unaccompanied song from the flamenco cante jondo [deep song] repertoire), of the ‘Zorongo gitano’ (gypsy zorongo) collected by Federico García Lorca in his Collección de canciones populares españoles. 2 She begins, in the manner of a canción aflamencada or song in the style of flamenco, with the words to the chorus: 2 La luna es un pozo chico, las flores no valen nada, lo que valen son tus brazos cuando de noche me abrazan.