Federico Garcia Lorca – Casa Natal
The life of Federico Garcia Lorca began only a short distance from where it ended. He was born just to the west of Granada and was killed and buried somewhere just to to the northeast of that city.
There was an ironic reason why he found himself, fatally, in the midst of one of the few successful Francoist uprisings in Andalucía in the summer of 1936. He returned to Granada from what he thought was the insecurity of Madrid on the verge of civil war, also to celebrate his and his father's name day. In Granada, he wrongly supposed, he would be safe among “his people”.
Madrid remained in Republican hands until the very finish of the war in 1939.
Granada both nurtured and destroyed Lorca. At the end, it gave him no protection from arrest, probable torture, and murder, even though, in his short life, he had achieved Spanish and international acclaim.
If one wishes to visit places associated with Lorca in or about Granada, there’s now a good choice, ranging from the innocent to the morbid (supposed site of murder and unmarked and yet unidentified grave).
I’ve started with the innocent – the Casa Natal, the house in which Lorca was born in1898. It is in what is now a small town, Fuente Vaqueros, on the whole an unremarkable place, but set in the lush agricultural land west of Granada.
The potted biographies usually state the Lorca’s father was a “landowner”. In Andalucía that can mean anything from a hereditary ennobled lord of vast estates (parcelled out to military leaders after the defeat of the Moors) to small farmers. Judging from the Casa Natal, Lorca's padre was most certainly not in the first category, to begin with; nor, judging from the fact that his prosperity stretched to other houses in the countryside and eventually in Granada itself, was he in the latter. Indeed, he became a very big landowner.
A small farmer that did very well – enough to pay for a good education for his son and other childre, and to support Lorca financially, when necessary, at wobbly points in his early career.
The Casa Natal is a compact, two-storey house between two streets.
It is built round a little courtyard, and appears to have three sides of accommodation. This is to use “accommodation” very broadly, to include spaces for humans, animals, machinery, grain and animal feed.
As presented to the modern visitor, the Lorca family possessed, in their early days: a bedroom, with ensuite nursery space, a little dining room, a tiny sitting room with piano, and a small kitchen, all arranged around a stone staircase. This leads up to a large space under the roof – once the granary, now for temporary exhibitions.
The rooms are evocative. Original furniture still stands. Whether that means “contemporary to Lorca’s childhood”, or just belonging to the house when it was converted to a museum, is moot. However, the bed in the bedroom is pointed to as the actual bed of Lorca’s birth; the cradle in the nursery as his actual cradle; and, most poignantly, there is Lorca’s wooden baby walker, on casters. (Lorca had a slight mismatch in his leg lengths, which prevented him from walking properly until he was about three years old.)
On the walls there are pictures, mostly by Lorca, embroideries of his pictures by his female relatives, and photographs.
The photos are the posed portraits one would expect. Standing out are two primary school group photographs, where young Lorca somehow appears in both the boys’ and girls’ photos (segregation obligatory in the early C20, as elsewhere).
When I visited, the Exhibition in the granary space was about a Spanish artistic and literary avant garde movement called the “Generation of 27” – based around men that met together, in 1927, to honour the occasion of the 300thanniversary of the poet Gongora.
I am sad to confess that neither Gongora, not the names and faces (Lorca’s apart) of the “27” meant anything to me. I looked them up later. Most went into exile when Franco came. One died in prison. One, Lorca, was murdered.
We moved into the homely courtyard or patio- a well, a bust of Lorca, shrubs – and, on the other side, where the animals once lived – now a gift shop. Above, where their food was stored, now a smaller exhibition space.
This is fascinating. It is mostly dedicated to the travelling theatre company, sponsored by the 1930s Republican government, called La Barraca. Around dusty and rugged Spain, on the back of a couple of lorries, were for a couple of years transported a theatre troupe and their portable props, all organised and led by Lorca. The mission was to bring classical Spanish theatre to “the people”.
La Barraca was certainly popular, but I have no idea who constituted their audiences. What we did see was documentary footage of the troupe arriving at a location, unloading the bits of their stage, assembling it, donning their costumes and performing – with Lorca introducing the performance and then acting the role of a dark ghost in Calderon play – similar to the character of Death in Bergman’s film The Seventh Seal; or perhaps representing the mysterious force of el duende, the fierce spirit at the heart of great artistic performance, and a concept to which Lorca was much attached.
There is an odd note struck. The members of La Barraca all wore uniforms of dark overalls (when out of costume), with a badge, composed of the stylised masks of Comedy and Tragedy, embroidered on the front. The Nineteen Thirties and badged uniforms on the streets? In retrospect it is a little jarring, although serving an innocent image at the time – Artist as Artisan (some looking on from the Right doubtless found that less than innocent).
The Casa Natal is only open to guided tours. The guide is like an old-fashion solitary country station master, who changes hats as he moves from being ticket seller, to porter or guard. Out of one door one street our guide sold us tickets; half an hour later, at the appointed time, he flung open the door on the other street, now our guide proper (in Spanish). Whilst we perused the “27” exhibition he watered the pots in the courtyard. At the end of tour, he popped behind the till in the shop and sold us memorabilia.
As mentioned, Fuente Vaqueros is not a town linger long in. It has a square, with Lorca quotations on the flagstones. A statue of the poet dominates a central roundabout. Also on the roundabout is something very rare in Spain: a small memorial to the town’s Civil War dead.
There is also a restaurant that, in more seasonal times of the year, obviously enjoys success. However, on the day of our visit it was empty but, surprisingly, open. Front of the house was an inept young man. In the kitchen was his mother. The printed menu was not applicable. Instead, and after consultation with the kitchen, the young man produced a short hand-written list of choices, which he read out to us. He wrote down wrong choices, in wrong numbers of each (their were four of us customers). When the wrong dishes were politely returned, a tremendous row ensued in the kitchen. Finally correct plates were delivered. At the end our waiter presented his mother’s thanks for our custom and we sent our compliments back.
One wall of the restaurant was covered in black and white photographs, many of Lorca or with a Lorca theme. But, as our waiter explained, to make up the numbers to cover the wall, multitudes of random family photographs of the restaurateurs and other townsfolk had been mixed in.
It was a pleasing effect, anchoring Lorca in his “people”, to whom he always felt great loyalty.
April 2019
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