 His father Antonio received guitar lessons from the hand of a cousin of Melchor de Marchena : Manuel Fernández ( aka Titi de Marchena ) , a guitarist who arrived in Algeciras in the 1920s and established a school there . Antonio introduced Paco to the guitar at a young age and was extremely strict in his upbringing from the age of 5 , forcing him to practice up to 12 hours a day , every day , to ensure that he could find success as a professional musician . At one point , his father took him out of school to concentrate solely on his guitar development . In a 2012 interview de Lucía stated that , " I learned the guitar like a child learns to speak . " Flamenco guitarist and biographer Donn Pohren and record producer José Torregrosa compared Paco 's relationship with his father to the relationship of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Leopold Mozart in the way both fathers " moulded their sons " into becoming world @-@ class musicians , and both continued to dictate even after they became famous . Paco 's brother Ramón idolized Niño Ricardo , and taught his complex falsetas to his young brother , who would learn them with relative ease and change them to his own liking and embellish them . This angered Ramón initially who considered Ricardo 's works to be sacred and thought his brother was showing off , but he soon began to immensely respect his brother and came to realize that he was a prodigious talent and a fuera de serie , a special person . Like his brother , Ricardo was Paco 's most important influence , and his first guitar hero ; Paco said " all of us youngsters would look up to him , trying to learn from him and copy him . " In 1958 , at age 11 , Paco made his first public appearance on Radio Algeciras . That year , he met Sabicas for the first time in Málaga . A year later , he was awarded a special prize at the Festival Concurso International Flamenco de Jerez de la Frontera flamenco competition . 
