Despite all the things we had already seen, the day was not over. A remarkable and unexpected gem of Córdoba was the Museo Julio Romero de Torres. We had never heard of Julio Romero there, and I think what we were really trying to do was to go to the Museo de Ballas Artes next door. But they have the same entry way and the lady at the ticket counter I think was trying to ask us which one we wanted to go to and we didn’t understand and we wandered on into Julio Romero’s former home there and I am glad he did. Quite an interesting painter!
Unfortunately they did not allow photos inside the museum so instead of my crappy photos you’ll have to instead rely on the higher-quality ones that Google took. I keep harping on our lack of context as some cultural self-flagellation, but of course we were walking into this museum blind as well. There’s not a whole lot of explanatory text that I recall, and one of the first things they have you do is watch this uh artsy video. Very informative. One thing becomes very quickly clear about Julio Romero de Torres as you walk through the museum though: the man liked women.
The museum is not particularly large, featuring just a few galleries with a number of his generally pretty large-format works. Most of the paintings are about women. A large number of those were of perfectly normal women, as in like, this is a painting of a flamenco dancer. But I thought the most interesting paintings were the gender-swapped ones. The single most intriguing one was of the Archangel Saint Raphael. I suppose I am not deep enough in the cannon as to understand if angels are men or women, but I am pretty sure Raphael is usually depicted as a dude so making him a her is a choice and I wonder what he was trying to say. This was a theme of his, switching up your normal religious iconography. Here is the Pietà, but, you know, sexy. This dude should be way more popular on Tumblr, tell you what.
Alongside a note that the frames were big and ornate, other paintings I wrote down as thinking they were especially cool included:
I wrote down in my notes that I thought Poema de Córdoba was probably my favorite overall for what it is trying to do with myth and metaphor, but one that caught my super amazing wife’s attention was Naranjas y limones. She noticed that the painting only depicts oranges, making the lemons a metaphor, if you catch my drift. Wikipedia agrees with her, so that’s a point for my super amazing wife’s super amazing art analysis skills. The museum did not have a gift shop, but the little shops across the way did have prints, and much to her chagrin I bought one of Naranjas y limones. Speaking of oranges, I know this is just standard in Córdoba but I still love it, so I will note the museum also had a lovely little courtyard with lovely little orange trees and man I think that is all I want in the world:
Although we had already experienced quite the day full of culture and history, there was one more thing to do: flamenco! I mean first we had to get dinner, we went to an Italian place, or Italian-inspired anyway, always interesting to see a culture interpreted through a third culture, especially if it’s a different third culture you’re not used to seeing it interpreted through. Such a mix! Oh and also there was even more souvenir shopping, we got a cute little model house. But then, for real, flamenco!
This was my super amazing wife’s first experience with flamenco, but it was not mine. You see, as part of our education to become well-rounded Naval officers, the Naval Academy made us sit through various cultural events. I saw the Russian National Ballet Company put on Swan Lake and lemme tell you, I hated it. A much more popular event though is when they had us sit through a flamenco performance. They had the Academy’s etiquette instructor give us a lesson on flamenco etiquette the day before which annoyed all of us, because it went over schedule making us late for classes (which we could get in trouble for), and she made the other mistake of telling us that it was a complement to shout olé! a lot, so during the actual flamenco performance itself, which I remember being really good (way better than that stupid ballet performance) (this is not a “Russia’s invading Ukraine” opinion by the way, I’ve been hating on this experience for a decade and a half now), we all got to obnoxiously shout olé while in fact being square down the middle of appropriate etiquette. Anyway I was looking forward to seeing flamenco again.
It was really good! We of course went to one of the nightly flamenco performances that caters to tourists, but I read online that most flamenco is for tourists now anyways, so really when you think about it this was the most authentic type of flamenco. Entrance came alongside a drink ticket and we both got sangria (a dangerous drink for me). We settled in and waited for the show to begin. I was really impressed by the guitarist, who managed to look between bemused and bored while strumming out just extraordinarily complex music that these women (and one man) were dancing to. Vocals were provided by a lady who happened to be pregnant, making it all feel like a family affair. My super amazing wife was particularly impressed by the footwork, having experience in Irish step dancing herself. It was all really expressive and I wish I knew more about the subject as to have been even better able to appreciate what it was. I was stunned when 80 minutes had gone by and it was over, despite an encore. A very full day behind us, we finally head back to turn in for the night.
Pat in the World 
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