Not until the 1860s was it possible to go from Paris to Spain entirely by train. French railways got near – to Bayonne – by 1856, but it was not until 1864 that the Spanish linked up their railway to Irun, still to this day the frontier junction. After the peninsula wars, the Spanish government had ensured that no French trains could cross into Spain by introducing a wide-gauge permanent way of six Castillian feet, just in case another Napoleonic-style invader harboured any ideas of steaming through the border. Despite this, Spanish theatrical companies (rather than individuals) began to get to Paris by the 1850s and grace its stages. How troublesome it must have been to go by boat, as was previously the way.

Spain was by this time opening up. Import and export became easier. In terms of musical spectacle Spain had become too much of an importer: of Italian opera and French ballet, as Don Preciso had complained. As the century progressed things began to change and, above all, Madrid and Barcelona began to realise they no longer had to rely on imported spectacle; they too could export culture. Opera was out of the question – the Italians and French could hardly be rivalled. But dance became a possibility, and companies were established in these theatres with French dancers prominent in the troupes. The Teatro del Liceu opened in Barcelona in 1847, closely followed by Madrid’s Teatro Real in 1850. A fusion of Spanish folk-dances and ballet seemed to be the way forward, and travelling companies were inaugurated, largely under French control, thus forming links with Paris.

The different dance traditions emerging in Spain are often confused. Stemming from the folk dances of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was a hybridisation with classical ballet, which professionalised these dances for the stage – they became a spectator performance danced no longer in soft slippers, but rather in proper ballet shoes. Based on what we now call the bolero, the style was known as the Escuela bolera (Bolero School), and it underpinned Spanish dance in the mid-nineteenth century, achieving considerable foreign acclaim. The Spanish were known above all for their dance.

In France ‘going Spanish’ for a couple of ballets became highly fashionable.