Garcia Lorca's childhood house in Fuente Vaqueros
POETA
GARCIA
LORCA
CANCIÓN LLENA DE HORAS
PERDIDAS EN LA SOMBRA
CANCIÓN DE ESTRELLA VIVA
SOBRE UN PERPETUO DIA
(Song full of lost hours
in the shade
Song of a living star
over a neverending day)
These are the words that are inscribed on a plaque on the
corner of the street where Garcia Lorca was born in Fuente Vaqueros.
And here are the two fountains in the town, one with a huge statue of Lorca:
But I really want to talk about Granada, where Lorca's family moved when he was 11. Imagine sitting in the open air—a bit chilly on the
toes—being serenaded by two young men on Spanish guitar, with a view of the
Alhambra lit up as you raise your head skywards. Though I am alone, this is as
close to heaven as I have come in a very long time. And then add Granadans with
such lightness and joy, eager to talk to you, and you have some sense of what
my Friday night was like after an entire morning in the Alhambra and a stroll
to the Garcia Lorca Park—despite his house being closed. And then there’s the
grilled cod or the seafood paella (and for others, the ham and pork) I had last
night. And the wine. And the flamenco in a cave at a club I’d been invited to
in Sacromonte—the gypsy quarter of Granada. I though I would never find a place
to equal Italy, but I was wrong. Perhaps because Granada has the palpable presence
of gypsies and poetry and many traces of the Moors—victims of the same
persecution as the Jews and responsible for the Cante Jondo—the soul of the
Deep Song of Andalucia.
As others go on pilgrimages to the cathedral where Fernando
and Isabella are sepulchred, as a
Jew, my bond to the Moors and antipathy to the Spanish monarchs who were
responsible for the destruction of the civilization of Al-Andaluz and for
routing out the Jews has me choosing to avoid the Cathedral. My pilgrimage is to music and dance and poetry. Imagine a town where to say "I am a poet and I love Lorca," raises an eyebrow of pure joy and pride and comraderie.
When the solitary Spanish woman on the beach in Mojácar
said, “This is really Murcia, not Andalucia,” I didn’t quite understand. Now
that I’m in Granada, I do. Here the people are as open as a split
pomegranate—symbol of the city and the derivation of its name. I chat away in
Spanish to everyone and people are happy to talk to me. In Mojácar the locals are as prickly, surly (with
some exceptions) as the cactus without the fruit. when I arrived in Granada on
Thursday and began walking uphill in the Albayzín, the Arab quarter, I could
feel my chest opening, as though I hadn’t been breathing before, as though my
spirit had been locked inside the depths of one of the snail shells that cover
everything in Mojácar. Mojácar has no duende—or at least I haven't been able to find it. When I
stroll at midday or dusk past the small fruit groves, I am eyed with suspicion.
And at the beach I look up at all the rampant developments of small white
condos, mostly for English retirees. Granada, on the other hand, is duende’s birthplace.
Now I will see if I can get into Huerta de San Vicente, Lorca’s summer
house in Granada.