i met Virginiaher daughter, because she was my student in the University of Huelva when he was studying Agricultural Engineering and I taught him Topography. I remember her because she was very nice and we had a great time in class with her jokes. Although today I am going to dedicate my lyrics to her mother, Victoria, I have no choice but to also remember her and dedicate at least a few words about her.
Victoria was born in the year 1948 in the Matadero neighborhood of the city of Huelva. Neighborhood of bullfighters, soccer players and singers where the College of the Teresian Motherswhich is where she learns her first letters, standing out for how good, applied and clever she was.
I also knew his brother, the well-known archery champion who became an Olympian at the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984 and who had beach bars on the beach in Umbria Point before her sister Victoria. I only knew her from seeing her on the street and in the shop in Huelva at the time called Nuevas Galerías, which is where she had worked since she was 15 years old. She was all kindness and very good education, with an exquisite treatment.
To Victoria Prieto she liked flamenco from a very young agebecause it comes from an inheritance from his uncle Ramon Hidalgo, who was the owner of a bar located on Calle Moguer and where all the flamencos from Huelva met, and she liked to listen to them. His father Santiago Prieto Hidalgo He was a great artist who painted marvelously. She keeps her paintings with great affection and admiration. In addition, her father was the one who for the first time gilded the Holy Week passage of the Brotherhood of the Holy Supper of the parish known as the Polvorín. And her mother ran a bread office that she later ran when she left school, until she went to work.
Already in his new job he also stood out and was given positions of responsibility. She had very good penmanship and clerical skills. Not surprisingly, he had taken accounting courses, which gave him the opportunity to work in cashiers, prepare invoices and have relationships with clients. For this reason, her most direct bosses welcomed her very well and she remembers them with great affection, especially Don Genaro Fernández, with whom she still maintains a friendship.
To all this, appears in your life Juan Jose Gomez and they decide to get married and form a beautiful family with three children. These are the mentioned Virginia, Pablo and Santiwho decide to set up a beach bar on the beach of Punta Umbría and which has been under the name of Chiringuito El Loro for many years. By the way, the parrot still remains in the establishment, which is an ideal place where you can eat very well with first class products and a very good reputation. Victoria, as I already said, was always very fond of flamenco and she was aware of everything that was happening in that world. For this reason, she saw with perplexity how in 1972 the Flamenco Cultural Club and in its statutes it was very clear that to become a member it was an indispensable condition “to be a man”. That put women on guard and 9 years later, in 1983, the first Women’s Cultural Club in Spain was founded, which will now celebrate its first 30 years.
Victoria acknowledges that the Men’s Club always helped them a lot. She, for five years, was president and many others, vice president, as well as the presenter of almost all the events. The other day, without going any further, she presented the Flamenco Festival Heading to the Sea in Punta Umbría, so well known in Spain. But what she feels most proud and happy about is having made the Exaltation of the Saeta. I saw live the flamenco opera “And later America” and my hair still stands on end when I remember that night of August 2 in La Rábida. That authentic work of art by Eduardo Fernández Jurado was tremendous.
She is currently president of the Federation of Flamenco Clubs and his daughter Virginia the vice president. Virginia alone deserves a separate chapter, but for now, just by saying that she has been trained in the foundation of Cristina Heeren, an American patron of flamenco, the quality of my former student is said. And as I almost always say, I don’t have room for more, but I don’t want to finish without mentioning that the goddess fortune came to smile at the beach bar and everyone. Even Victoria’s son-in-law had a well-deserved award for being such good people and putting it to good use and helping so many people.
