María Ruiz I Granada, (EFE) de Yerma that attracts thousands of tourists every year.
Lorca painted Granada, set its Vega to music, dedicated poems to its corners and tried to describe its duende to tell the whole world the essence of a province that has learned to squeeze its legacy and has presented the playwright as the perfect excuse for a visit.
The author of Yerma has become a source of tourist and economic inspiration and an asset in transforming that Granada to which Federico brought his friends and to which he demanded more self-esteem and less complacency.
His birthplace, the summer resort in the capital, the theater where he acted with Manuel de Falla, the Alpujarra spa where he went with his mother and even that last walk he took before he was murdered by Víznar and Alfacar have become almost at the point of pilgrimage, although increasingly decorated with added value.
dramatized visit
One more example of that rhyme that Granada offers to Lorca’s pull is in his birthplace, which last year received more than 8,000 people and offers dramatized visits by women from Fuente Vaqueros, a reinforcement of the offer that also creates employment for women and local.
Also with pure theater he has resurrected the house of Frasquita Alba, the Valderrubio property that inspired Lorca in one of his most universal works, and which has added photographs of the family that lived in it donated by the granddaughter.
After years of rehabilitation, this property is another asset for local tourism that also has a forty-minute dramatized visit before going through the Lorca museum, a proposal for small groups.
The interest in Lorca and in following in his footsteps is also reflected in data, such as that of the 81,264 people who asked about him at the Tourist Board of the Diputación de Granada last year.
To bring other perspectives of Federico closer, the Granada Provincial Council created Universo Lorca, a multidisciplinary and transversal project, with cultural, educational and touristic components, which brings together all the dimensions of the author of Poet in New York.
Lorca, Granada’s trump card to attract tourists
“People are interested in this product, which is a way of paying homage, putting on display the image of our most universal poet,” the deputy for Tourism of Granada, Enrique Medina, explained to EFE.
The Universo Lorca website embodies this universal interest in his legacy and receives almost a thousand unique users a day who spend almost 20 minutes per session and who come from Spain, but also from the United States, Argentina, Mexico and Italy, and who pay attention to his biography and, in a special way, in the places and routes of Lorca.
In addition to the museums and consortiums dedicated to the poet, the menu of “Lorca” things to do is almost as varied as his work and allows you to do a literary gymkhana about his work, walk the trails that inspired him, walk through his childhood or pedal from La Huerta de San Vicente to his native fertile plain along the paths of poplars that he immortalized in his work.
And since tourism lives not only on literature, this Lorca menu also offers the option of discovering other places linked to Lorca somewhat further away from the official map, a tour that ends with a lunch with traditional products from its Vega.
In this way, by bike, walking, with theater or with food, Granada boasts the Lorca spirit and clings to its legacy to turn Federico’s duende into a tourist attraction. EFE
