The striking, fiery woman featured on Google’s latest Doodle is none other than Spanish dancer Lola Flores, who would have celebrated her 93rd birthday on Thursday.
Born María Dolores Flores Ruiz in 1923 in the southern Spanish town of Jerez de la Frontera, Flores rose to fame in the 1950s and 1960s as a dancer, singer and actress, not just in her native country but also across Mexico and the U.S.
Known as much for her hit songs like “Pena Penita” (Little Sorrow) as her popular nicknames like “La Faraona” (the Pharaoh, a reference to the supposedly Egyptian features resulting from her partial Gypsy heritage), she died in 1995 after a prolonged battle with cancer.
Describing her in 1952, TIME wrote: “Some other dancers have perhaps been more beautiful. But none combined beauty, grace and voice like Lola Flores.”
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