Israeli dancer Adva Yermiyahu had a ticket home after years in Spain and hoped to find an Israeli husband; days before her flight, she met Spanish guitarist Manuel, sparking an instant connectionTomer On|Flamenco dancer Adva Yermiyahu was supposed to begin her studies at the College of Management Academic Studies when she decided to recalculate her route.“I was sitting in my parents’ apartment and told my mother, ‘I don’t understand why I need to go to the College of Management if the thing I love most in the world is also a profession. I want to do flamenco!’”GalleryAdva Yermiyahu and Manuel Ahova; Tel Aviv-Spain, a love story (Photo: Courtesy)To her delight, her mother, an art therapist, supported the decision, and Yermiyahu decided to give up her studies in Israel and travel to Spain to study flamenco professionally. She moved to Seville, where she was exposed to the world of visual performance and dance, and spent a year working on a show with local artists. But then something happened that she did not expect.“In the final week of rehearsals for the show, I decided that I had fulfilled my biggest dream and that I was going back to Israel because I was looking for a relationship and really wanted an Israeli man. I had a dream of living in Tel Aviv, where I grew up my whole life, and having my mother and father help me raise the children, with a regular day at our house.”A few days before her return to Israel, she went out for a beer with a friend, and a local guitarist named Manuel began talking to them. Her friend would later say that from the moment Manuel arrived, he and Yermiyahu could not stop talking. Their conversation flowed, and time flew by without them noticing, until the bar where they were sitting closed.When they each went their separate ways, Yermiyahu admitted to her friend that she felt a strange connection to the Spanish guitarist, though she definitely assumed that was the end of the story. After all, in a few days she would be on a plane, on her way to live the rest of her life in Israel.But Manuel had other plans. Until Yermiyahu’s flight, he did not stop sending messages and calling. Yermiyahu tried to fend off the courtship, which seemed to her unnecessary and without a future, but eventually she relented. Two days before her scheduled return to Israel, she went out with him on a date.The date was wonderful, and the initial connection she had felt on the night they met only grew stronger. Yermiyahu did return to Israel, but she was no longer sure where her heart was, in Spain or in Israel. She and Manuel began talking every day, all day. At the time, Manuel was playing at a tablao, a Spanish flamenco club that is very well known in Seville. At the same time, Yermiyahu, who was struggling to continue planning her Israeli future, found herself traveling for a month to teach flamenco in China.Adva Yermiyahu dancing flamenco (Photo: Dan Ben Ari)The longing drove her crazy, and she decided to persuade her manager to bring a true professional flamenco guitarist straight from Spain for the final week of the course in China. The manager was enthusiastic, and then Yermiyahu admitted to her that she was in love with that guitarist. And so Yermiyahu and Manuel found themselves spending their second date at Disney World in Shanghai.After a week, the course ended, and Yermiyahu returned to Israel while Manuel went back to Spain. They marked their third date during Hanukkah, when Manuel came to visit her in Israel, and by then he had already met Yermiyahu’s entire Israeli family.So did the Spaniard defeat the dream of an Israeli groom?