{"id":9555,"date":"2018-12-21T18:23:52","date_gmt":"2018-12-21T18:23:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/?p=9555"},"modified":"2018-12-21T18:23:52","modified_gmt":"2018-12-21T18:23:52","slug":"flamenco-festival-gives-brownsville-a-taste-of-spain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/?p=9555","title":{"rendered":"Flamenco Festival Gives Brownsville a Taste of Spain"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_9556\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-9556\" class=\"size-full wp-image-9556\" src=\"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/IMG_3240.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"278\" srcset=\"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/IMG_3240.jpg 600w, https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/IMG_3240-300x139.jpg 300w, https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/IMG_3240-405x188.jpg 405w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-9556\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Young flamenco dancers entertaining the crowd during the festival. Photo: Tony Vindell\/LFN<\/p><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em><strong>by Tony Vindell\/LFN<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Some of Spain cultural heritage like its music and food left an impression in Brownsville early this month.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s because flamenco dancing and paella highlighted the first annual Brownsville International Flamenco Festival on Dec. 7-8.<\/p>\n<p>Solo and dance teams from Allegro Ballet of Brownsville and from Mexico showed their skills during the two day event, held at Casa Carlotta K. Petrina Cultural Center and Market Square.<\/p>\n<p>The festival was the first hosted by the Brownsville Society for the Performing Arts.<\/p>\n<p>There was also a paella cooking contest in which five chefs competed for the best dish cooked in a large pan designed for such a meal native to Spain.<\/p>\n<p>The winner was Enrique Espinoza, a chef at Half Moon Saloon.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe took first place among five cooks,\u201d he said after the prizes were awarded. \u201cI am pretty glad for this distinction.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The festival was well received by many of the 200 or more people attending it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is quite a beautiful event,\u201d Rachel Perez, a retired school teacher, said. \u201cMy husband\u2019s (Arturo) family are from Spain and the dances we watched and the paella we sampled were second to none.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She said she had been looking for the organizers to congratulate them.<\/p>\n<p>Brownsville resident Laura Lucio said she did not know this city has such activities.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI just found out because my son plays the guitar,\u201d she said. \u201cI really enjoyed being here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ben Neece, a musician and city commissioner, said he wanted to thank everybody for attending the first BIFF.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was a success,\u201d he said. \u201cThis the first time we have it and look at this crowd.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Tony Vindell\/LFN Some of Spain cultural heritage like its music and food left an impression in Brownsville early this month. That\u2019s because flamenco dancing and paella highlighted the first annual Brownsville International Flamenco Festival on Dec. 7-8. Solo and dance teams from Allegro Ballet of Brownsville and from Mexico showed their skills during the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":9556,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-valley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9555"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9557,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9555\/revisions\/9557"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}