Growing up, Lavinia Spalding believed she was destined to become a tocaora, or a female flamenco guitar player. It didn’t exactly happen, for reasons you’ll soon hear. One day, decades after giving up on her dream, something shifted. On a whim, she emailed three of the biggest tocaoras in Spain to ask for lessons. To her surprise, they said yes. 

Resources

• Listen to this playlist, which features one of the tocaoras Lavinia met.
• Listen to Pilar Alonso, Antonia Jiménez, and Marta Robles.
• Read the original story Lavinia wrote for AFAR.
• Follow Lavinia on her website.

Be sure to subscribe to the show and to sign up for our podcast newsletter, Behind the Mic, where we share upcoming news and behind-the-scenes details of each episode. And explore our second podcast, Unpacked, which unpacks a tricky topic in travel each week.