Young Cordovan girl who, according to the testimony of one of her daughters, met Federico García Lorca as a teenager, in 1916, in the Balneario de Lanjarón spa where the poet’s mother, Vicenta Lorca, used to take the waters to improve a liver ailment. She was the second of the lovers attributed to the poet along with, according to Manuel Ángeles Ortiz, María Luisa Egea, one of the most beautiful girls in Granada in the 1920s who was a regular at El Rinconcillo..
She was blond, blue-eyed and liked popular Andalusian music, played Granados, Albéniz…. They maintained correspondence, according to the daughter, which was destroyed by the family. The alleged relationship between the two was interrupted due to the “little manliness” of the poet.
According to Ian Gibson’s research, the girl, who was 14 years old and Federico 18, inspired the poet’s first love poems. Her father was a rancher from Cordoba and her brother, Mariano, also befriended Federico at the spa. According to the testimony of María Luisa’s daughter, Federico fell in love with her and they played piano together. She was blond, blue-eyed and liked Andalusian popular music, she played Granados, Albéniz…. They maintained correspondence, according to the daughter, which was destroyed by the family. The alleged relationship between the two was interrupted due to the “little manliness” of the poet.
However, there are several objections to María Luisa and Federico’s meeting. First, the letters they exchanged do not exist; second, it is not documented that the Lorca family visited Lanjarón at such an early time. According to Isabel García Lorca the visits began in 1923 or 1924. Furthermore, the Hotel España, where the meeting supposedly took place, did not open until 1917.
María Luisa Natera later married another Granada-born painter. She died in Madrid in 1983.
