Alicia comes from a pequeño pueblo near Granada. Every little pueblo has a few of their own words that no one else in Spain understands, but apparently Alicia's pueblo has more like a hundred. Alicia would have done fine as an actress as well, I believe. I normally don't think of girls of twenty-two being "characters" but she already is. She's really a cute and pretty girl but mischevious. Even Marta has trouble understanding her when she speaks in her pueblo tongue. She conjured an old person from the village pretty well, showing how they don't know anybody's name, and would ask, "Antonio who?" to which the answer would be, "the son of the good looking sister of the baker", "Oh, him...!"
Or the bar called "C'e Caballo" (It's probably not written that way on the front, it's just what people call it). "C'e" is the way they contract "casa de". This guy's real name is Carlos but everyone knows him as "horse" (caballo).
Flamenco is fully of nicknames, but I suppose in any little town you'll find them. Some guy has the name of "espanta-coche" (coche meaning car). Espantar is a word I just learned and didn't recognise it, so she demonstrated shoe-ing birds away, "if there are a bunch of palomas here and I do like this... or espanta-pajaros like they have in the countryside", and she stood with arms straight out like a scarecrow. That just made me more confused, "scare-car?!" I said. "Yeah..." One can only surmise how a guy came to have the name "scare-car" (probably closer to "shoe-car" like "shoe-ing" it away.)

The bands practicing in some nearby street for Semana Santa were coming through the open window. Marta explained that her first year here, her sister visited for that week, and one day went out with a list of places to stop and see different processions. They went out the door wearing jeans and running shoes and immediately realised they were extremely out of place. Everyone was dressed in flamenco dresses and suits, extremely high heels. Marta and Alicia both shook their heads and said, "that's Sevillanos".

The fabric shops on my stroll through the center were filled with hordes of women ordering dresses or buying fabric. They are called flamenco dresses but are worn by all the women here, and probably by many people who don't know much about the kind of flamenco I'm interested in. This kind of dress has the characteristic ruffles of dancer's dresses but the function is rather different, and the look a high fashion, stylized version of what dancers traditionally wear. They are always hip-hugging to the point of making it difficult to walk, and they always have multiple layers of ruffles on the bottom, as do the sleeves. Along with the dress, a shawl, flowers in the hair, and big earrings are usually worn. But aside from this, the styles vary widely. Some are nearly hippy-ish looking, although a hippy dress of this style is pretty much an oxymoron. In general, they look like cakes. It would be cool to wear one once, I suppose.