The artist Micaela ‘La Chunga’, legend of flamenco tablaos, dies at 87

Micaela Flores Amaya, known artistically as ‘La Chunga’, died this Friday at the age of 87, as confirmed by her own son to a collaborator of the program ‘And now Sonsoles’.

The dancer’s son, Luis Gonzalvo, has assured that his mother had been “in and out of the hospital” for days. “It is sad and it is never pleasant news, but there has also been a long progression of an illness and then you accept it a little better,” he explained.

Likewise, the actress and friend of the dancer Charo Reina has entered the program live by phone lamenting her loss. “She danced barefoot and her hand movement was something spectacular. She was a woman of race,” he highlighted.

The dancer and also painter was born in Marseille in 1938 and as a girl, only six years old, she danced barefoot in the bars of her neighborhood in Barcelona and the painter Paco Rebés who discovered her in one of his improvised street performances.

The frenzy that ‘La Chunga’ transmitted with her dance caught the attention of the painter Salvador Dalí, who proposed a very special work, a canvas that he placed on the floor on which he left several tubes of paint. To the sound of Ramón Gómez’s guitar, ‘La Chunga’ dances barefoot on the canvas, spreading the color and thus creating a new art, painting with her feet.

‘La Chunga’ exhibited his works in Spanish cities such as Madrid but also at a European level in capitals such as Paris. After his debut, in the 60s, touring the Costa Brava, in addition to his trips abroad, he became one of the faces of the best-known flamenco tablaos nationally and internationally for more than 20 years.