Balneario de Lanjarón

Vicenta Lorca Romero, prone to problems arising from liver failure, was the driving force behind the annual visits of much of the García Lorca family to the Lanjarón Spa, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, where the spring waters come from. The curative sessions soon became a pretext for a family vacation between 1924 and 1935. They used to stay at the Hotel España. There is graphic or written evidence that Federico García Lorca accompanied the family several summers and that he took advantage of the stays not only to travel around the Alpujarra region but also to write some of the emblematic poems of the Gypsy Ballads.

In 1924, Federico traveled with his family to Lanjarón in September, as he describes in a letter dated in the spa town to his friend the Cuban scholar José María Chacón, then living in Madrid: “In Lanjarón, oh sierra, oh orange tree, oh rock, I am reborn to your friendship”, and in another of the same date addressed to Melchor Fernández Almagro to whom he encourages to visit Lanjarón: “You should come to that paradise as soon as you can. I have found very curious tales and ballads”.

There is no evidence about the 1925 stay. It was the year in which they bought the Huerta de San Vicente (San Vicente Farmhouse) and of the visit to Catalonia to the Dalí family home. In 1926, however, it is recorded that he visited the spa in July. The spa already enjoyed a just fame that dates back to the Mozarabs. The healthiness of the waters of the spa was recognized in 1770, although the therapeutic exploitation of the springs became generalized in the 19th century.

Federico returned to Lanjarón in the second half of 1927. To that period belongs a famous photo taken at the spa in which he poses with his whole family. It is the only one that outlines the atmosphere of the summers in the town. From Lanjarón he maintained extensive correspondence with friends such as Salvador and Anna María Dalí, the gallery owner Sebastián Gasch and the Uruguayan set designer Rafael Barradas. The poet’s approach to painting was not casual. That same summer, between June and July, he exhibited his drawings at the Dalmau galleries in Barcelona. In Lanjarón he writes, but he also draws: “As soon as I pick up the pen to draw, I become the most abstract thing that exists. I have a horror of the anecdotal”. And he cites some titles of the drawings conceived at the spa: Cleopatra, Ecce homo of Spanish School, Sea Breeze, Venusometer, Poem of the Hook….

One of the fixed themes he tackled were the portraits of San Sebastián, inspired by the iconography of the patron saint of Lanjarón: “San Sebastián is a myth of sweet water in a glass of pure crystal,” he wrote to Dalí.