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XV Festival de Cante de Las Minas. La Unión.
The Contest.
For forty years, since 1961, the Festival del Cante de Las Minas has been held
at the town of La Union, which is a town of 15.000 inhabitants in Murcia (Spain)
that hosts and organizes what probably is the Flamenco Contest with greatest prestige
and credibility within a Flamenco Festival that from its origin has included the
participation of the greatest stars of the Cante.
The Antiguo Mercado (Ancient Market), a modernist edifice made of glass and
iron in 1901, is the scenery at which all of the contenders and all of the shows
of the Festival perform. A contest of "cante" (flamenco singing), which had its
first winner in Antonio Piñana (his grandson Curro Piñana
later won in 1997, and Miguel Poveda in 1993), and that was also won by
other young emerging stars such as Francisco del Pozo (1998).
From 1980 onwards, the contest also included a prize for "toque" (guitar playing)
(Niño de Pura won in 1984, Vicente Amigo in 1988, Cañizares
in 1993, Carlos Piñana in 1996...) and the contest was further expanded
with the inclusion of a dance prize in 1994 (Javier La Torre 1994, Israel Galván
1996).
Without a doubt, the Ancient Market is the most well-known and typical edifice
of the town, and it is a clear evidence of the past buoyancy of the economy which
some local inhabitants of La Union call the Imperial era.
The footprints of a mining past are still present in the surroundings of La
Union, as there are several abandoned mines which had gradually disappeared, almost
always as a result of the eternal search for cheap working hands on the part of
the companies. Ruinous mines which have left a trace of peculiar and hard "cantes"
which contrast with the passive listlessness of the close-by massive touristic
resorts of the Mar Menor (area of the Mediterranean coast).
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