Granada, Lorca territory

García Lorca would be another without Granada and, probably, Granada would be another without Lorca.

What the poet experienced in his childhood, adolescence and in his comings and goings from wherever he was left a mark on many of his works.

(1945), for example, arises from the conversations that the young Federico heard from the Alba family, without being seen, through the well that his aunt Matilde's house shared with Frasquita Alba, José Benavides Peña , his daughters and his maids.

That snooping of his childhood in Valderrubio — a town that was called Asquerosa then, a name he avoided at all costs — stayed in some corner of his brain until several decades later.

And so it happened with many youth experiences in the Andalusian province.

For this reason, visiting Granada is recognizing the poet.

enlarge photo cova fdez.

He lived and traveled the world, from Madrid to New York, Havana, Montevideo or Buenos Aires, but Granada always pinched him.

Sometimes with pain, sometimes with tenderness.

He had a strong relationship with the capital, but he was also a Grenadian from the province and wherever he went he left a memory of his passage.

This is a tour of the main Lorca locations.

One of the rooms of the poet's house-museum in Valderrubio.

FERMÍN RODRÍGUEZ

Cowboys font

The boy Federico lived his first stage in the Vega de Granada and only left it, at the age of 11, to go live in the city.

Fuente Vaqueros and Valderrubio were the two environments that saw him running around in shorts, and there he took his first reading steps.

Eventually he left, but he never stopped coming back.

At number 4 of what is now Calle del Poeta Federico García Lorca de Fuente Vaqueros was born in 1898, on June 5.

Through the same door through which he entered and left, visitors to his museum house are now entering and leaving (entrance, 3 euros; patronatogarcialorca.org/casamuseo.php).

It is a modest residence in which Don Federico, the father, lived with his first wife, Matilde Palacios.

Upon her death, he received an important inheritance and, some time later, remarried.

Two relevant facts for our protagonist.

Vicenta Lorca, Don Federico's second wife, gave birth to the poet a year after the wedding and, on the other hand, the father would use the inheritance to buy land in the former Asquerosa.

The investments worked and he would end up as a large owner, shareholder in numerous sugar factories, and moneylender.

Many of the poet's artistic and vital adventures were paid for with the proceeds of all that.

The poet's birthplace, in Fuente Vaqueros, has been restored and is shown to the visitor as it was

Federico would recognize himself today in his birthplace, a restored house, as the guide Pepe Rodríguez recalls, “from what his sister Isabel and some elders from Fuente Vaqueros remembered of how it was originally”.

To the left of the entrance, the crib in which the baby Federico slept, behind a curtain that separates his little room from his parents' bedroom.

Further on, the dining room and a modest kitchen make up the first home that sheltered the writer.

And, of course, a piano.

Any emblematic Lorca place has a piano that he or one of his friends played.

Ticket sales are in the stables then, and the barn on the top floor hosts small but magnificent temporary exhibitions.

Along with the house, the study center on the artist and a theater make up the Lorca axis in his hometown.

His stage in Fuente Vaqueros, “that very quiet and smelly little town”, was always highly celebrated by the artist.

"The town is surrounded by poplars that laugh, sing and are palaces of birds," he wrote.

Poplar trees that, in perfect rows, are kept today in the Granada plain through which, between Fuente Vaqueros and Valderrubio, the writer walked.

Street in the Granada town of Valderrubio.

FERMÍN RODRÍGUEZ

Valderrubio

Less than 10 minutes by car from Fuente Vaqueros is Valderrubio, where the García Lorca family moved when Federico was seven years old.

After receiving the inheritance, the poet's father looked for land to grow beets in his hometown, but could not find them, which after a few years did happen in the neighboring town.

There, in an environment of dozens of sugar mills, many of which had Federico Sr. as a partner, he had more and more land and occupations.

Tired of coming and going from Fuente Vaqueros, and the rain cutting off access to the town, the father bought several houses in Valderrubio which he demolished to build a large house.

Similar in structure to that of Fuente Vaqueros, the dimensions are much larger and the ceilings are higher.

It is not the modesty of the farmhouse that was his first home, but the residence of someone who already has money and decides to build his own house.

It is located at number 20 Calle de la Iglesia and can also be visited (entrance fee, 4 euros; valderrubioenlorca.com).

The rooms are kept as they were, although their content reflects more the life of the town at the beginning of the 20th century than the life of the Lorca family.

Along with the excellent home, in which a piano cannot be missing, the area that can be visited includes the residence of the landlords, the stables and a small theater.

enlarge photo The Bernarda Alba House in Valderrubio (Granada).

FERMÍN RODRÍGUEZ

A few steps from there you can visit the Casa Bernarda Alba, Paquita Alba in reality (Calle Real de Valderrubio, 1).

It was the residence similar to that of Aunt Matilde, where Lorca visited his aunt and cousins ​​and where the well that both families shared and through which the story that Lorca shaped when the actress Margarita Xirgu, many years, was leaked. later, he asked her for a bad role.

Arrival in Granada

When the poet was 11 years old, the then four members of the family - father and mother, Francisco and Federico, after the death of Luis and Isabel, who would already be born in Granada - left the Vega behind and went to the Granada capital.

Don Federico is already a businessman and believes that his place is the city.

His first home here is at Acera del Darro, 50, downtown, and where Isabel, the writer's little sister (who died in 2002), would be born.

Today the building is very changed and it is almost impossible to imagine that the Lorca brothers played in their garden from 1908 to 1917.

That first house, huge and with plenty of space for recreation, was rented and the family was forced to abandon it.

Entrepreneurs who had made money with the sugar business and who proposed a large avenue that would give better access to the city, moved to Gran Vía, the avenue of the sugar producers.

And they built not only Gran Vía, but also the splendid buildings that this street still houses.

The family lived in number 34 for a year, but they never felt comfortable and, finally, they all moved back to the center, in the Acera del Casino, 31, a location where there is nothing left, but where there were very relevant moments for the poet and his circle of artist friends.

La Huerta de San Vicente, summer residence of the Lorca family.

FERMÍN RODRÍGUEZ

The homes of the Lorca family have not left a special mark on Granada.

However, this is not the case with its gathering spaces or its summer house.

They bought the Huerta de San Vicente in 1926, then in the Granada plain and today located in the heart of the city.

There, from the purchase to the murder of the poet in August 1936 - shot on the road from Víznar to Alfacar - the family spent summers.

A house where Federico rested or received friends like Manuel de Falla or Manuel Ángeles Ortiz, but, above all, a place of retirement where he wrote.

There are numerous documented letters from Federico from La Huerta that give some clues to the poet's occupations: “There are so many jasmine in the garden and so many ladies at night that at dawn it gives us all at home a lyrical headache, as wonderful as suffers the stopped water ”(1926).

"I am in the middle of the bucolic, all day eating delicious fruit and singing on the swing with my brothers, and I do so much nonsense that sometimes I am ashamed of my age" (1927).

Besides the games with his brothers, he would send many letters in which he tells his friends where his writings go.

He used to write in La Huerta and there he made progress in

and

among others.

Today the Huerta de San Vicente can be seen exclusively through a guided tour (entrance fee, 3 euros; huertadesanvicente.com).

Statue of the poet in the Chikito restaurant, in Granada.

FERMÍN RODRÍGUEZ

Federico's gatherings

Lorca's social life was intense.

It is well known that he was a sociable man and delighted to hang out with his friends, and in his Granada of the twenties of the last century there were always reasons to see each other.

The local intellectuals met in their gatherings and, to these appointments, it was necessary to add the frequent visits of intellectuals from outside Spain who came to the Andalusian city invited by Federico, Manuel de Falla or others.

In the Chikito restaurant, in Granada, a sculpture by Lorca recalls the gatherings of El Rinconcillo

On the first floor of the now-defunct Café Alameda, 150 meters from what was the family home of the Acera del Casino, García Lorca, Manuel de Falla, Hermenegildo Lanz, Fernando de los Ríos and many others gathered to talk about the human and the divine.

The pianist Arthur Rubinstein and the writers Rudyard Kipling and HG Wells appeared at some point in this gathering called El Rinconcillo.

Today the space at Café Alameda is occupied by the Chikito restaurant (restaurantechikito.com), a classic from Granada.

Here, at a table in a corner of the premises, Federico is still seated in bronze and lends himself to accompany anyone who seeks his quiet company.

The Taberna de El Polinario was another of their meeting places.

Calle Real de la Alhambra was one of the most important transit routes in the Nasrid enclosure.

It still is.

And Antonio Barrios,

ran this tavern there with the unofficial position of Consul General of the Alhambra.

And there, in the back room of what in the fourteenth century were Arab baths, gatherings of more flamenco than talk were held, which were also attended by Lorca, Falla and others.

The original tavern was torn down in the 1930s and no longer exists.

In its place is the Ángel Barrios Museum, son of El Polinario and internationally renowned composer.

The center, with free access, depends on the Board of the Alhambra and Generalife.

Falla and Carmen de la Antequeruela

A carmen is a deeply Granada dwelling.

It is a residence of great internal wealth that, due to the dryness of the wall that surrounds it, does not appear so.

Inside, an orchard, garden and rooms - not necessarily huge - represent a small garden in the city.

Manuel de Falla, Federico's intimate, lived in one of those places next to the Alhambra, despite the difference in age.

Many intellectuals passed through Carmen de la Antequeruela in the 1920s, when the composer arrived in the city, and in the first part of the 1930s.

The poet and the musician spent a lot of time together.

Currently, this carmen houses the Manuel de Falla House-Museum, where you can admire a multitude of personal objects of the renowned Cádiz composer (ticket, 3 euros; museomanueldefalla.com).

Detail of the Lorca family's room at the Hotel España, in Lanjarón.

FERMÍN RODRÍGUEZ

The Lanjarón spa

The Lorca's definitely liked the Alpujarra.

The family went to Lanjarón to drink the waters of its spa.

And the poet, of course, spent a lot of time on his work ... and on looking at people's accents.

In 1927 he wrote: “I work here in Lanjarón.

The Moorish accent sounds in all the languages ​​of the people ”.

It was the environment that Federico suggested to Falla for a puppetry route, although the latter did not happen.

Their mother, Doña Vicenta, used the water from Lanjarón due to a liver disease and that is why, for little more than a decade, between 1924 and 1935, they spent a few days of the summer there and stayed at the Hotel España, still exists (hotelespanalanjaron.es).

Located on the main avenue of the town, you can visit the two adjoining bedrooms that the family used to occupy, which are kept practically as the Lorca used them.

In the restaurant, the piano in which Federico played four hands with María Luisa Natera Ladrón de Guevara and reproductions of the many letters he sent since his summer retirement at the entrance to the Alpujarra are exhibited.

Garcia Lorca Center

The epicenter of Lorca in Granada capital is today the Federico García Lorca Center.

The cultural institution aspires to become the space for the dissemination and knowledge of the artist's funds.

The poet's legacy arrived in his safe a little over two years ago: almost all his theatrical manuscripts, numerous poetry and prose, hundreds of letters written and received, drawings, personal documents, photographs, and so on.

It also has a library, a theater and a room where temporary exhibitions are organized.

The center, totally dedicated to him but in a location without much relation to the poet, is another good way to soak up his life and work (free admission; centrofedericogarcialorca.es).

'Lorcapedia': the website that knows the poet best

It has not yet been a year and a half since it was launched, and the universolorca.com website is the best virtual space available to meet Federico García Lorca, his life and work.

As explained by those responsible, the Provincial Council of Granada, the page aspires —and is practically already there— to become the

.

It explains in a particularly interesting way, among other reasons thanks to the excellent coordination of the journalist and writer Alejandro V. García, the biography of the poet, his work, the places where he lived, the routes he traveled and his entire circle of social and family relationships .

The Provincial Council has already announced that the English version will also be available in the near future.

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