This Bolero has a Polonaise flavor. There is but little Spanish in its ingredients. It is merely a memorandum of Chopin's early essays in dance forms.

Niecks wrote: " Chopin's Bolero, Op. 19, may be described as a Bolero a la polonaise. It is livelier in movement and more coquettish in character than the compositions which he entitles polonaises, but for all that its physiognomy does not on the whole strike one as particularly Spanish, certainly not beyond the first section of the Bolero proper and the seductive strains of the Pililento, the second tempo of the introduction. And in saying this I am not misled by the points of resemblance in the rhythmical accompaniment of these dances. Chopin published the Bolero in 1834, four years before he visited Spain, but one may doubt whether it would have turned out less Polish if he had composed it subsequently. Although an excellent imitator in the way of mimicry, he lacked the talent of imitating musical thought and character; at any rate, there are no traces of it in his works. The cause of this lack of talent lies, of course, in the strength of his subjectivism in the first place, and of his nationalism in the second. I said the Bolero was published four years before his visit to Spain. But how many years before this visit was it composed? I think a good many years earlier; for it has so much of his youthful style about it, and not only of his youthful style, but also of his youthful character--by which I mean that it is less intensely poetic. It is not impossible that Chopin was instigated to write it by hearing the Bolero in Auber's "La Muette de Portici" ("Masaniello"), which opera was first performed on February 28, 1828. These remarks are thrown out merely as hints."