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ONLY IN SPAIN by Nellie Bennett

ONLY IN SPAIN

A Foot-Stomping, Firecracker of a Memoir About Food, Flamenco, and Falling in Love

by Nellie Bennett

Pub Date: July 8th, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4022-9385-6
Publisher: Sourcebooks

A peripatetic Australian’s account of how a flamenco dancing hobby led to high adventures in music, food and love in Spain.

Bennett was a bored shop girl who worked at a high-end department store in Sydney. Tired of two years of mind-numbing, dead-end routine, she shook up her world with flamenco dance lessons, and she immediately fell in love with the glamour, fire and romance of the dance. Soon, she realized she wanted more than to simply take lessons; she wanted to “dream [her] life and live life like it was a dream” by making flamenco the center of her world. She decided to continue her dance studies in the ancient city of Seville in southern Spain. For six weeks, Bennett danced by day and immersed herself in flamenco bar culture by night. She learned to relish the pleasures of flirting on the dance floor with handsome, dark-eyed Spanish men, who made her feel as though she was “the star of her very own Broadway musical.” The vegan Bennett even learned to enjoy savory tapas dishes made from meat. By the end of her stay, she knew she would return. Brimming with intentions to live in Spain indefinitely and aspirations to become a professional flamenco dancer, she flew to Madrid several months later. She attended the famous Amor de Dios flamenco academy and then danced with dangerously seductive neighborhood residents when she could no longer afford to go to the academy. After being kidnapped by a gypsy boyfriend who wanted to “marry” her by taking Bennett home with him, she fell in love with a Basque man with whom she lived for three years. Only after her lover asked her what she wanted did the author recognize her one truest passion: to travel forever into the beautiful unknown.

Lightweight, footloose good fun.