The Lorca family took advantage of the annual stays in Lanjarón to tour part of the Alpujarra. They visited Órgiva, Cáñar, Carataunas and Pitres, sometimes with Falla and other friends.
Federico García Lorca and the composer Manuel de Falla, accompanied by the future professors José Manuel Segura and Antonio de Luna, plus the lawyer Rafael Aguado Martín-Montijano, owner of the Los Montijanos Estate, took advantage of their stay in Órgiva in early 1926 to visit other sites.
They examined the Cueva de Sortes, a natural hollow located on a limestone block of earth used by shepherds as a shelter. The cave, which can still be visited, is supposedly related to the composition of García Lorca’s romance The Unfaithful Wife.
Federico, impressed by the beauty of the people of the Alpujarra, wrote: “There are of course two perfectly defined races. The Nordic, Galician, Asturian, etc., and the Moorish, preserved purely. People with blue eyes and people with eyes… indescribable.”
According to the most repeated version, being all gathered at dinner time at Los Montijanos, they summoned the son of the guard, an amateur guitarist who interpreted by a soleá the first verses of a popular romance that circulated then: “Que yo me la llevé al río, / creyendo que era mozuela, / pero tenía marido” (I took her to the river, / believing that she was a young girl,/ but she had a husband). Federico, vividly impressed, wrote down the verses and later turned them into the romance of The Unfaithful Wife from Gypsy Ballads, which appeared published in 1928 in Occidente magazine. The boy is linked to a picturesque inhabitant of the Luck Cave, Ramón Naranjo Carmona, nicknamed El Guajiras.
In a letter from Federico to his brother Francisco, in February 1926, still impressed by the visit, he writes: “The human types are of an impressive beauty. I shall never forget the village of Cáñar (the highest in Spain) full of singing washerwomen and somber shepherds. Nothing new literary. There are of course two perfectly defined races. The Nordic, Galician, Asturian, etc., and the purely preserved Moorish. People with blue eyes and people with… indescribable eyes. I saw a queen of Sheba shelling corn on a bitumen-colored and violet wall, and I saw a child king disguised as a barber’s son. There are no communications, they are fine hospitable and, except the town clerks, have no notion of the beauty of the country”.
Lorca’s view of the Alpujarra in 1926, only two years after the publication of Gypsy Ballads, where he included the well-known Ballad of the Civil Guard, did not escape the ruthless and inhuman power that, according to testimonies, the armed forces exercised in those rural areas. A month after the visit, in February 1926, Lorca wrote to his brother Francisco about the Alpujarra: “A corporal from Carataunas was bothered by some gypsies so, to make them leave, he called them to the barracks and with pliers taken from the fire pulled out a tooth from each one saying: `If you are here tomorrow, another one will fall’. Naturally the poor nicked gypsies had to emigrate to another place. This Easter, in Cáñar, a 14-year-old gypsy stole five chickens from the mayor. The Guardia Civil tied a piece of wood to his arms and took him through all the streets of the town, beating him hard and forcing him to cry out. I was told this by a child who saw the procession pass by from school. His account had a bitter realism that was touching. All this is of an unsuspected cruelty… and of a strong Fernandino flavor”. The tremendous and bloodthirsty description may have influenced the harshest lines of the ballad, which, according to some, cost Lorca the animosity of the right wing.
After the breakup in 1928 with Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel and the sentimental estrangement of Emilio Aladrén, Lorca suffered a personal crisis that prompted him to travel to New York in 1929. In letters sent to his family from the United States he insistently reminds his siblings to accompany their mother to Lanjarón.
Y que yo me la llevé al río
[Foolish me, that brought her to the river]
creyendo que era mozuela,
[thinking she was a maiden,]
pero tenía marido.
[but she had a husband.]
Fue la noche de Santiago
[It was on Santiago’s night]
y casi por compromiso.
[and almost out of a sense of duty.]
Se apagaron los faroles
[The street lights went out]
y se encendieron los grillos.
[and the crickets lit up.]
En las últimas esquinas
[On the last corners]
toqué sus pechos dormidos,
[I touched her sleeping breasts,]
y se me abrieron de pronto
[and suddenly they opened up]
como ramos de jacintos.
[like wreaths of hyacinths.]
El almidón de su enagua
[The starch of his slip]
me sonaba en el oído,
[resounded in my ear]
como una pieza de seda
[like a fine piece of silk]
rasgada por diez cuchillos.
[shredded by ten knives.]
Sin luz de plata en sus copas
[Without silvery light on their tops]
los árboles han crecido,
[the trees have grown,]
y un horizonte de perros
[and an horizon of dogs]
ladra muy lejos del río.
[barks far away from the river.]
*
Pasadas las zarzamoras,Pasadas las zarzamoras,
[Past the blackberry shrubs,]
los juncos y los espinos,
[the rushes and the hawthorns,]
bajo su mata de pelo
[under his head of hair]
hice un hoyo sobre el limo.
[I made a hole in the silt.]
Yo me quité la corbata.
[I took off my necktie,]
Ella se quitó el vestido.
[and she took off her dress.]
Yo el cinturón con revólver.
[Me, the belt with the revolver,]
Ella sus cuatro corpiños.
[her, her four bodices.]
Ni nardos ni caracolas
[No tuberose or seashell]
tienen el cutis tan fino,
[have so smooth a face,]
ni los cristales con luna
[nor does the moon reflected on glass]
relumbran con ese brillo.
[shine with such a radiance.]
Sus muslos se me escapaban
[Her thighs ran away from me]
como peces sorprendidos,
[like surprised fish,]
la mitad llenos de lumbre,
[half of them full of heat,]
la mitad llenos de frío.
[half of them full of cold.]
Aquella noche corrí
[That night I ran through]
el mejor de los caminos,
[the best of paths]
montado en potra de nácar
[riding a mother-of-pearl mare]
sin bridas y sin estribos.
[without bridles or stirrups.]
No quiero decir, por hombre,
[Because I’m a gentleman, I won’t repeat]
las cosas que ella me dijo.
[the things that she told me.]
La luz del entendimiento
[The light of understanding]
me hace ser muy comedido.
[makes me prudent with my words.]
Sucia de besos y arena
[Dirty with sand and kisses,]
yo me la llevé del río.
[I took her away from the river.]
Con el aire se batían
[The air was fighting against]
las espadas de los lirios.
[the lilies’ swords.]
Me porté como quien soy.
[I behaved like what I am,]
Como un gitano legítimo.
[a gipsy through and through.]
Le regalé un costurero
[I gave her a big sewing box]
grande de raso pajizo,
[made of straw-like satin,]
y no quise enamorarme
[and I didn’t want to fall in love]
porque teniendo marido
[because, having a husband]
me dijo que era mozuela
[she told me she was a maiden]
cuando la llevaba al río.
[as I carried her to the river.]
(Federico García Lorca. Gypsy Ballads, 1928)
(The Unfaithful Wife)- Arredondo Valenzuela M. García Lorca in Lanjarón. A Poet and a Landscape, included in Lanjarón, Water Landscapes. Lanjarón Spa, 1999.
- Adoración Elvira Rodríguez and Fernando Rubio Muñoz . Lorca in the Country of Nowhere (Lanjarón-Alpujarra), 2017.
- Federico García Lorca. Complete Works I and IV . RBA-Instituto Cervantes. Madrid, 2006.
- Isabel García Lorca. My Memories. Tusquets. Barcelona, 2002.
- Juan González Blasco. Órgiva. Milestones in his History. Volume II. Hermanos Gallego Hódar Publishing House. Órgiva, 2001.
- Lorca´s location
- Cáñar and Carataunas
- current location
- Cáñar and Carataunas
- DETAILS OF THE VISIT