Who Killed Granada? From “the Beautiful” to “the Wounded” City of Falla and Lorca

Abstract

Two opposed conceptualizations of Granada, shared across poetry, painting (and photography) and music, combined to create a contrasting transmedia soundscape of the city throughout the twentieth century. Granada “the Beautiful” responded to the romantic myth of the city and was rooted mainly in the Alhambra, an Arab palace among the mountains, filled with gardens and water fountains. This idealized image could be heard in Manuel de Falla’s literary and pictorial dream: Noches en los Jardines de España [Nights in the Garden of Spain] (1916), and also appeared in Federico García Lorca’s musical conception of his city (1933). Fifty years later, the democratic transformation of Spain generally led to a punk, poetic deconstruction of the city in Rimado de ciudad [Rhyming from the City] (1983), singing about the margins of the city: Granada “the Wounded”, emerging from the suburbia and from the dark streets of the Arab quarter: the Albaicín.