The family behind the tablao

A story told by the house

Almost everything known about the tablao's origins comes from the tablao itself. Its history page tells the story of Pepe Esteve and Maribel Arrué, a couple who sang for a well-heeled crowd on the Côte d'Azur before bringing flamenco to Valencia. The page calls their tablao the oldest in the city. It is a family narrative, written by the family, and the sections below keep that attribution in view. Read it as the house's own telling of its past, which is how any venue's history is best read.

A guitar learned in a village band

According to the venue's history page, Pepe learned the guitar as a boy from his father, who played for pleasure in the village band of Casinos. The page says he refined his playing with a guitarist from Alboraya known as El Chufa, and that after his military service he chose to go into show business, at a time when steady work for artists was hard to find.

Mallorca, the Canaries and a Valencian theatre

The venue's page dates his first job to 1958, in Mallorca, as tourism there was starting to grow. A contract in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria followed, and he then came back to Valencia, where an impresario hired him for the Teatro Ruzafa. There, the page says, he met Maribel Arrué, already a noted vedette, who became his wife. The pair's working lives were built in theatres and clubs rather than in a single room, and the tablao on the Plaça del Mestre Ripoll is where the page says that travelling career came to rest.

El Pirata on the Côte d'Azur

The page says a French agent was looking for a couple to sing coplas and flamenco at El Pirata, a well-known venue on the Côte d'Azur, and that Pepe and Maribel took the offer. It adds that the club took its name from a nickname given to its owner and that Pepe became its artistic director. The family lived in the area around Menton for many years, in the venue's telling, before the decision to return home.

Back to Valencia in 1977

The history page says Pepe decided to come back to Spain in 1977, to Valencia, because he did not want his children to grow up French, knowing little Spanish or Valencian. The family describes itself as a pioneer in opening a family-run flamenco tablao in the city. The page says their children perform with them, and that the venue also works as a Spanish tavern for dinners and celebrations.

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The family still on stage

The venue's history page says the family still performs at El Toro y La Luna and that shows run from Wednesday to Sunday. The show page says seven artists perform, drawn from a family of flamenco performers, with a different group of house artists and friends taking the stage each night. It describes song, guitar, palmas and dance, and says the performance is staged very close to the audience.

How to read first and oldest

The show is billed as coming from the first tablao to open in Valencia, and the venue's own site says oldest, open since 1977. Both are the venue's claims about itself. Wikipedia says tablao venues developed across Spain during the 1960s, replacing the cafés cantantes, and notes that tablaos are often decorated with photographs of famous people. The venue says its walls carry such photographs. Read the claims as house history, not as a ruling. For a visitor choosing a night, the useful part is simpler: the show is the work of a family troupe that says it has been at it since 1977.