Granada had a deep influence on the adolescent Spanish playwright and poet, Federico García Lorca , and it was the Granadios who first recognised his genius and his gift for a lyrical poetry that reflected the passion and the pain of Andalucía. The landscape and the people that form the backdrop to his rural tragedies and his earlier poems lie in the villages of the Vega - the vast plains that surround Granada - and in places such as Fuente Vaqueros where he was born and where he spent his first eleven years.
Lorca's Birthplace, Fuente Vaqueros, nr. Granada
Fuente Vaqueros is a village of postcard-like simplicity, where the only sound at midday is the slap of dominoes coming from an inky bar hidden behind a beaded curtain. Old men sit in the shade of the poplar trees on one side of the plaza, while the old women, las viejas, head to foot in black as though in a performance of the playwright's House of Bernarda Alba, sit on the opposite side of the square, busy with their looms.
From the workers in the olive groves that surround the village come faint snatches of the wailing, minor-keyed cante jondo, the song full of pain which Lorca captured in Gypsy Ballads and Poems of Cante Jondo. This is Espana La Verdad, where Lorca found the passionate, gitano soul of Andalucía and put it into the poetic form that revolutionised Spanish theatre in the Thirties.
La Fuente, as it is known locally, is a gracious little town with a maze of narrow cobblestoned streets and alleyways. At one time this area formed part of the Kingdom of Al-Andalus (Andalucía) and eight centuries of Moorish influence is still obvious in the whiteness of the houses, the barred windows and the flower-filled courtyards glimpsed through open doors. Wandering through the town, or sitting with a fino (the dry sherry of the region) at a café in the square, is an ideal way to spend an afternoon.
The street where Lorca was born has been renamed Callé Poeta García Lorca and the house in which he spent his childhood has been transformed into a museum. It is small, with few objects to demand your attention, but in the converted upstairs granary there is a fascinating collection of photographs, manuscripts, publications and curiosities covering the poet's life - in particular his time in New York. This alone is worth the entrance fee. If you feel you've seen too many castles and cathedrals in Spain, this unpretentious, sparsely furnished house with its idiosyncratic collection of papers is a delight.
Across the street from the museum and facing the plaza is the monument erected to the poet by Cayetano Aníbal, and if you sit on the stone seat in front of the monument, with just a little suspension of disbelief, it is possible to see the square as Lorca saw it - a meadow full of wild flowers, grasses and lizards. Here he watched the women wash the clothes in the fountain; here it was he absorbed the speech and the rhythms that were to energise his plays in later years; and here it was he learned to identify with the victimes of a stifling tradition.
Lorca was assassinated by Franco's Nationalist troops shortly after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, executed at a spot between Viznar and Alfacar. The place where he and fellow victims were shot is in the Parque Federico García Lorca, especially created to preserve their memory.
His work and his memory were stifled under the claustrophobic rule of the late dictator but in his own land he is once again hailed as a genius. His plays today are as relevant as they were in the Thirties, their passion and pain as accessible now as they were then.
Dates for the Diary:
Fiesta of Flamenco and Poetry on Lorca's Birthday, June 5th.
In August, aficionados meet here on the anniversary of the poet's death.
Recommended Books
2. Fererico Garcia Lorca: A Life. by Ian Gibson (Faber & Faber)
3. The Plays and Poems of Federico Garcia Lorc.
Mari Nicholson - Award Winning travel writer and historian, member of British Guild of Travel Writers.Travelwriters.co.uk, and Society of Women Writers and ...
