The Lorca family spent their summers in Lanjarón from at least 1924. The pretext was that the mother, Vicenta Lorca, came to take the waters to relieve a liver disease.
The García Lorca family were regular summer visitors to Lanjarón. From 1924 until 1935, Federico García Rodríguez and siblings Federico, Francisco, Concha and Isabel accompanied their mother, Vicenta Lorca Romero, affected by hepatic colic, to the Hotel España, the most luxurious of all accommodations in the Alpujarra, with the purpose of taking the waters in the Lanjarón Spa and relieve her ailment.
They turned the two-week summer stays in the town that opened “the gates of the Alpujarra” into a festive and healthy habit that allowed them to get to know the town and its picturesque landscapes and gradually enter the wild and fascinating region. Lorca took advantage of the tranquility of Lanjarón to write poems and answer the numerous letters from friends to whom he highly recommended the virtues of the region.
Federico also wrote some of his best-known poems at the hotel. The work linked to Lanjarón includes at least two compositions from the Gypsy Ballads (on which he had been working since 1924 but which did not appear published until 1928 in Occidente magazine), those entitled Brawl or Brawl of youngsters, according to different versions, and The Unfaithful Wife, a poem supposedly inspired by a real case he met in the Alpujarra. In addition, he signed numerous drawings belonging to a collection for the Catalan art critic Sebastián Gasch, a friend of Dalí and contributor to the magazine L’Amics de les Arts. Much of the correspondence bears the letterhead of the hotel in which Bernabé Pagés Hernández is listed as owner and Francisco Álvarez as director.
“In the hotels they play with clothes, the ladies read Trifles, by Coloma, and nobody looks at the mountains, prodigious with marine reflections.”
Isabel García Lorca has described in her memoirs the routine of the Alpujarra vacations. The family, after accompanying the mother to the spa, used to return to the hotel to have a breakfast of “memorable fritters”, the “best I have ever eaten in my life”. Don Federico stayed at the hotel reading the papers. Then, back to the spa and after lunch, excursions in the surrounding area, the longest in donkey trains.
In a postcard dated July 1926 addressed to Antonio de Luna (published by the researcher Juan González Blasco) Lorca recreates the atmosphere of the establishment: “Lanjarón would have a delicious landscape and light if it were not far from the sea. I see the saline mists and I get sad because it is the same as seeing a tree full of inaccessible fruit. Anyway, the chestnut grove has a very original style. In the hotels they play with clothes, the ladies read Trifles, by Coloma, and nobody looks at the mountains, prodigious with marine reflections. Everything is as if ruled by a nun. To save the spa, it would be necessary to organize a revolution of the bare-knuckled women. Farewell. A hug from Federico (Hotel España)”.
Ian Gibson unveiled a possible youthful love affair between the budding poet (actually more musician than poet), aged 18, and a fourteen-year-old girl called María Luisa Natera Ladrón de Guevara, in the summer of 1917 at the Hotel España. The only testimony, however, is that of a daughter of the young suitor who relies, at the same time, on a series of letters that have disappeared. That summer also coincided with one of the study trips through Castile with her professor of Arts Martín Domínguez Berrueta. According to this version, María Luisa could have been the addressee of the prose poem entitled The Poem of my Memories, dated a year later, in 1917: “Your heart was mine, but like a crazy summer star”.
Among the most curious characters that Federico met in the evenings at the Hotel España was the “sumptuous Leonarda”, a woman “still young, big, rather sturdy and very beautiful” resident of El Limonar in Malaga. “She did not dance and sat at the piano to talk with Federico. One night he slipped away and this Leonarda called out to him,” recalls Isabel.
Without knowing it, Federico is credited with having devised the slogan that over time agencies and tourism promoters have turned into the hook to attract tourists to the village: “Lanjarón, the gateway to the Alpujarra“. In a postcard addressed to Sebastián Gasch, which reproduces a partial panoramic view of the village, dated August 20, 1927, he writes: “Dear friend: I am in Lanjarón, located in Sierra Nevada and at the gateway to the Alpujarras. From here I send you an affectionate memory. As you can see from the postcard, the town has the strange physiognomy of being small. It seems to me that I will be able to work here”. In the upper left part of the postcard, above the mountain peaks, Federico has written the word “sea”. Would he be able to glimpse above the peaks the mirage of the Mediterranean?
Federico García Lorca during a walk through the Alpujarra / Photo: FGL Foundation.
Suntuosa Leonarda.
[Sumptuous Leonarda.]
Carne pontifical y traje blanco,
[Pontifical meat and white suit,]
en las barandas de Villa Leonarda.
[on the railings of Villa Leonarda.]
Expuesta a los tranvías y a los barcos.
[Exposed to trams and boats.]
Negros torsos bañistas oscurecen
[Black bathers torsos darken]
la ribera del mar. Oscilando
[the shore of the sea. Oscillating]
-concha y loto a la vez-
[-shell and lotus at the same time-]
viene tu culo
[your ass is coming]
de Ceres en retórica de mármol
[from Ceres in marble rhetoric]
(Canciones, 1921-1924)
[(em>Songs, 1921-1924)]
En la mitad del barranco
[Halfway down the gorge]
las navajas de Albacete,
[knives of Albacete,]
bellas de sangre contraria,
[beautiful with enemy blood,]
relucen como los peces.
[shine like fish.]
Una dura luz de naipe
[In the sour green]
recorta en el agrio verde,
[a hard light of a card]
caballos enfurecidos
[cuts out enraged horses]
y perfiles de jinetes.
[and profiles of riders.]
En la copa de un olivo
[Two old women cry]
lloran dos viejas mujeres.
[in an olive tree.]
El toro de la reyerta
[The bull of the feud]
se sube por las paredes.
[climbs right up the walls.]
Ángeles negros traían
[Black angels were bringing]
pañuelos y agua de nieve.
[handkerchiefs and snow water;]
Ángeles con grandes alas
[angels with big wings]
de navajas de Albacete.
[of Albacete knives.]
Juan Antonio el de Montilla
[Juan Antonio de Montilla]
rueda muerto la pendiente,
[rolls dead down the slope,]
su cuerpo lleno de lirios
[his body full of irises,]
y una granada en las sienes.
[a pomegranate in his temples.]
Ahora monta cruz de fuego,
[Now he rides a cross of fire]
carretera de la muerte.
[down the road of death.]
*
El juez, con guardia civil,
[Through the olive groves]
por los olivares viene.
[come judge and Civil Guard.]
Sangre resbalada gime
[The sliding blood is moaning]
muda canción de serpiente.
[the mute song of a snake.]
Señores guardias civiles:
[Civil Guardsmen, Sirs,]
aquí pasó lo de siempre.
[it’s the same as always:]
Han muerto cuatro romanos
[four Romans are dead]
y cinco cartagineses.
[and five Carthaginians.]
*
La tarde loca de higueras
[The afternoon, grown wild]
y de rumores calientes
[with figs and hot murmurs]
cae desmayada en los muslos
[swoons and falls into]
heridos de los jinetes.
[the rider’s wounded thighs.]
Y ángeles negros volaban
[And black angels were soaring]
por el aire del poniente.
[through the western sky.]
Ángeles de largas trenzas
[Angels with long tresses]
y corazones de aceite.
[and hearts of olive oil.]
- Adoración Elvira Rodríguez and Fernando Rubio Muñoz. Lorca in the Country of Nowhere (Lanjarón-Alpujarra). 2017.
- Arredondo Valenzuela M. García Lorca in Lanjarón. A Poet and a Landscape, included in Lanjarón, Water Landscapes. Lanjarón Spa, 1999.
- Federico García Lorca. Complete Works I and IV. RBA-Instituto Cervantes. Madrid, 2006.
- Isabel García Lorca. My Memories. Tusquets. Barcelona, 2002.
- Ian Gibson. Lorca and the Gay World. Planet. Barcelona, 2009.
- Juan González Blasco. Órgiva. Milestones in his History. Volume II. Hermanos Gallego Hódar Publishing House. Órgiva, 2001.
- Lorca´s location
- Hotel España in Lanjarón
- current location
- Hotel España in Lanjarón
- ADDRESS
- Avenida de la Alpujarra, 42
- Web
- https://www.hotelespanalanjaron.es/en/
- Telephone
- 958 771 386
- reservas@hotelespanalanjaron.es
- DETAILS OF THE VISIT
The hotel is open all year round and offers visits to the bedroom Lorca used.