Get a nylon string guitar. It doesn't have to be a flamenco guitar per-se, any classical will do. But steel string acoustic guitars will absolutely not work for this style. The sound is wrong and the strings are too close together.
Learn the Andalusian cadence. It's the chords A minor, G, F, and E, in that order. This is the characteristic "Spanish" sound recognisable by everyone, and is in fact a fundamental building block of Flamenco style (por arriba). The chords can be played barred or open, your choice. You can instead start in D minor (por medio) if you like.
Practice a basic rumba strumming pattern until it is drilled into your muscle memory. The easiest is to just strum, counting from 1 to 8, and on beat 5 slap the strings instead of strumming.
Do not use a pick. There are several right-hand techniques you'll want to learn. The most important is probably rasgueado ("gypsy strumming"). You essentially flick your fingers so that each one strums the strings in rapid succession. It's challenging at first, but try to make the timing in between fingers roughly even. Next is tremolo: rapidly plucking the same string with alternating fingers, while playing bass notes with your thumb. This is a common classical guitar technique too, but Flamenco takes it further, often using 4 plucks instead of 3. Actually flamenco technique breaks many classical guitar "rules".
Once you want to start mastering more specific styles ("palos"), just get some tabs and work through them. You'll probably want to start with soleares, alegrias, farruca, fandango. Unlike classical guitar, nobody will look down at you for using tabs (or learning by ear) instead of notation. Paco de Lucia famously does not read notation.
Hope this helps. Have fun!