A Madrid for García Lorca
In March 1919, a young and restless Federico Garcia Lorca he received a letter from Madrid: “You had to come here; Tell your father in my name that he would do you more favor by sending you here than by having brought you into the world.” it was his friend Jose Mora Guarnido who wrote it, one of the members of the intellectual gathering "The Little Corner" , of which he was a part back in his Granada. With such a premise, how could he not wish he had that city too?
Federico ended up going to ** Madrid **. he was the politician Ferdinand of the Rivers who convinced the Granadan's parents to give him permission to leave Granada and continue his studies at the Madrid Student Residence , directed, at that time, by Alberto Jimenez Fraud.
That was how the first act of his relationship with the capital began. Place where he had his lively eyes set and with which he established an unparalleled symbiosis. Well, you can't tear Madrid away from Federico or the poet from the streets, theaters and history of this city.
Lorca, Dalí and Buñuel lived in the Residencia de Estudiantes in the 1920s
are fulfilled a hundred years of that moment in which García Lorca put his feet and the lyrical desires of him for the first time in Madrid, with the intention of staying. The cante jondo poet lived in the capital of Madrid in different stages between 1919 and 1936 , moment in which he fled to his land after the outbreak of the Civil War, where he was arrested and murdered in the early hours of August 18, 1936 by military coup plotters.
But before that crime that occurred in Granada, “In his Granada” , as his friend and fellow member of the Generation of 27 wrote, ** Antonio Machado **; the playwright flourished in the city of cats, he discovered the cosmopolitanism of a city that was incomparable to the provincialism from which he came and in it he wrote much of his works. Born in Granada, adopted from Madrid.
Madrid Student Residence
If what we want is to discover the most traditional side of García Lorca, Maria Belen Cantenys He is the right person to lead us to him. She graduated in Performing Arts, she carries out an original route called Lorca's Madrid , which leads us to the places that conquered this peculiar poet.
Punctual and on a cold morning Federico summons us in front of what was his last house. In the Alcala Street 96 , guarded by the Calle de Narváez and Avenida de Felipe II , the illustrious Andalusian lived on the seventh floor of this stately building between 1933 and 1936.
All the previous years that he spent in Madrid, he lived in the Student's residence, even when he was no longer a student. It was from there that he began his desperate escape with the outbreak of the Civil War. According to Cantenys, it is likely that she wrote there Bernarda Alba's house and that, there too, she would read it to her friends. Although she never got to see it premiered, it was not performed until 1954, almost twenty years later.
Next to the portal, on the facade of the melancholic building, a considerable size plaque reminds us of Federico's passage through it. Sponsored by the Spanish Theater, in which the playwright experienced one of his greatest successes with the play barren , released in 1934.
After the murder of the author, no member of his family returned to that house in Madrid, but they went into exile in New York, that city that he gave so much to his Federico de el. “ I never want to see this fucking country again in my life ".
Lorca's room in the Student Residence
It was the phrase that Federico García Rodríguez, father of the poet, blurted out in the summer of 1940, when he embarked with what was left of his family on the Marquis of Comillas, into American exile. He never came back. He died in 1945 and was buried in New York, never having returned to "this fucking country," as he put it. And there is his grave, possibly the grave of the saddest man in the world.
During the years that he lived in what was his first home, the Residencia de Estudiantes, Federico met some of his greatest friends and colleagues there: Vicente Aleixandre, Salvador Dalí, Rafael Alberti, Luis Buñuel or Pepín Bello ; among many others. Lorca loved the universe that existed in the "Resi" and, probably, if he had not been there, the poet would not have been who he was.
Among its rooms, works such as Mariana Pineda or the Gypsy romance , summit of universal poetry. In 1922, he told his parents in a letter that it is a place where “There is an extraordinary atmosphere of work and intellectual stimulation ". And he adds: "I was born a poet and artist like the one who is born lame, like the one who is born blind, like the one who is born handsome. Leave my wings in place and I will tell you that I will fly well".
There are not a few photos of the young poet strolling through the gardens of the residence, having heated gatherings with his friends in one of the rooms or playing the piano in his classrooms, since, in addition, he was a great pianist.
Lorca next to his piano in his house in Granada
That friendship was the true reflection of what the Residence had sought since its foundation in 1910: the creation of an intellectual environment and coexistence of students . It became a focus for the dissemination of modernity and a point of entry into Spain for European scientific and artistic currents.
From among its many residents emerged some of the most prominent figures in 20th-century Spanish culture. Today, the Residence is a private foundation, created by the CSIC , which maintains an important documentary collection and organizes conferences, courses, poetry readings, meetings and exhibitions; with the intention of recovering with it the spirit of his initial idea.
But the intellectual gatherings of Lorca and his brilliant friends ended up coming out of the walls of the Residence and moved to various cafes in the city.
At number 59 Calle Alcalá, very close to the fountain of the goddess Cibeles, we find today a irish pub . But, during the years of 2nd Republic , was one of the reference points of the city in terms of literature and politics. The Coffee Lion it became an extraordinary meeting place, since intellectuals of different political thought met there.
Benjamín Jarnés, Humberto Pérez de la Ossa, Luis Buñuel, Rafael Barradas and Federico García Lorca
Although it is true that both groups used to throw jokes and jokes at each other frequently, respect and friendship prevailed above all else. Such was the case with Primo de Rivera and Garcia Lorca , who could be seen together, from time to time, in the happy whale -that was how they called the basement of the Café Lion, since whales and mermaids covered its walls-.
After the Civil War, the owners of the premises tried to continue with the gatherings, but the Francoist laws that prohibited meetings managed to put an end to it. Currently, The Merry Whale is the warehouse of the pub, but even inside, the whale continues to observe everything while smiling and the sirens sing, all waiting for the great conversations to return to that place.
Even more famous for his gatherings is the Coffee Gijon , through which great figures from the world of letters and the arts have passed and have even dedicated some of his works to him. Impromptu meetings were held on a daily basis in this "office of letters and art" on various topics, especially painting, literature, cinema and bullfighting.
Enveloped in a dense cloud of smoke and with the smell of coffee from early in the morning, characters such as Benito Pérez Galdós, Valle Inclán or our Federico García Lorca.
On March 22, 1920, the Andalusian playwright premiered his first play at the Eslava Theater, today Joy Eslava. The Butterfly Curse it was an absolute failure for the author, since the text, written in verse, features cockroaches and a butterfly. For the time, the first insects provided a disturbing environment, to the point that some spectators shouted during the work that someone should bring insecticide.
Lorca and his rural theatrical project of La Barraca
But if the Eslava Theater experienced his first great failure, the Teatro Español awarded him an overwhelming triumph with the premiere of the rural tragedy Yerma , belonging to the "Lorca's trilogy" in which they are also Bernarda Alba's house Y Blood Wedding .
El Español was, without a doubt, his great theatrical home in Madrid. In memory of him, currently, you can see a statue of the artist in the Santa Ana Square , erected at the request of the then director of the Spanish Theater. Made in 1984 in bronze, it represents the full-length life-size figure of the man from Granada.
In it, dressed in a jacket suit, he holds in his hands a lark that seems to be about to take flight towards the theater. In the same square, a little further away, the effigy of Calderón de la Barca also looks towards the same place. As Cantenys told us during the visit: “How nice that Calderón looked at Español and now he looks at Federico and Español. As if it were an evolution of literature”.
he said Vicente Aleixandre that everyone knows what Federico represented in universal literature, but not everyone knows what he was like as a human being. He also affirmed that there are not a few great authors that the 20th century has produced in Spain, but that "in the very first row, in the very first place is Lorca". And he maintained that although he can be compared to some other contemporary poet, “in what he was not comparable to anyone was in his own person. He was the genius of personality. Sympathy elevated to cosmic phenomenon ”.
Our tour of Lorca concludes with many corners that have remained in our minds and with our passionate guide telling us that, according to those who were able to enjoy the company of the author: “ spending a day with Federico is neither nice nor unpleasant, it is spending a day Federico ”. So, I hope you all had a great day Federico.
Madrid to Federico Garcia Lorca