{"id":9203,"date":"2018-12-03T11:57:59","date_gmt":"2018-12-03T11:57:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.universolorca.com\/lugar\/aljibes-square\/"},"modified":"2022-01-27T10:47:24","modified_gmt":"2022-01-27T10:47:24","slug":"plaza-de-los-aljibes","status":"publish","type":"lugar","link":"https:\/\/www.universolorca.com\/en\/lugar\/plaza-de-los-aljibes\/","title":{"rendered":"Plaza de los Aljibes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Plaza de los Aljibes in the Alhambra and its portentous viewpoint, scene of the 1922 Flamenco Song Contest<\/a>, was a space built after the Christian annexation in 1492. Its name comes from the huge tanks that filled the gap between La Alcazaba<\/a> and the Nasrid Palaces<\/a> and served to ensure the water supply in the years after the conquest of the Catholic Monarchs.<\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/a>
Photo of the ‘Deep Song’ Contest published by the magazine ‘Nuevo Mundo’.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

They were built by \u00cd\u00f1igo de Mendoza, Count of Tendillas, first warden of the Alhambra and captain general of the Kingdom of Granada. The cistern is 34 meters long, 6 meters wide and 8 meters high and, once covered, it became a large esplanade between the towers and defenses of the city, on the one hand, and the Puerta del Vino (Wine Gate)<\/a> and the entrances to the Arab palaces and that of Carlos V<\/a>, whose construction began in 1527.<\/p>\n

Falla, who abandoned musical composition to focus on the contest, was convinced that singing was “the initial germ of a very important part of our lyric poetry”.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

His link with Garc\u00eda Lorca and the whole group of spirited intellectuals who turned Granada in the 1920s into a place of cultural irradiation is linked to the Flamenco Song Contest of 1922, the first national contest dedicated to flamenco organized by the Centro Art\u00edstico de Granada<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Poster<\/a>
Poster of the Flamenco Song Contest jointly organized by Manuel \u00c1ngeles Ortiz and Hermenegildo Lanz. It shows the venue initially planned, San Nicol\u00e1s Square.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The contest, held on June 13 and 14, 1922, supervised, among others, by Manuel de Falla<\/a>, Federico Garc\u00eda Lorca, Miguel Cer\u00f3n, Antonio Chac\u00f3n<\/a>, and\u00a0Hermenegildo Lanz<\/a>, with the advice of singers such as Manuel Torre<\/a>, meant the recognition by the creators and intellectuals of this genuine expression of the so-called “primitive Andalusian singing”. The contest began to take shape a year earlier in the gathering of El Rinconcillo<\/a>, in the Alameda caf\u00e9, where Lorca and his friends were regulars.<\/p>\n

The contest, which opened a deep controversy between those who considered it a “Spanish thing” without interest (the chronicler Francisco de Paula Valladar) and those who defended the need to recover the original song and rid it of spurious additions (the musicians Falla, Joaqu\u00edn Turina, Federico Mompou, Roberto Gerhard, Felipe Pedrell and the critic Adolfo Salazar; the painters Ignacio Zuloaga<\/a> and Santiago Rusi\u00f1ol, and the writers Antonio and Manuel Machado, Enrique D\u00edez-Canedo<\/a>, Edgar Neville, Garc\u00eda Lorca or Ram\u00f3n P\u00e9rez de Ayala) marked a before and after in the history of deep song. Falla, who abandoned musical composition to focus on the call, was convinced that singing was “the initial germ of a very important part of our lyric”.<\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/a>
Photo prior to the Flamenco Song Contest, with Falla and Lorca in the group \/ Photo: FGL Foundation<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The contest was scheduled to be held in San Nicol\u00e1s Square<\/a>, in the Albaic\u00edn, on the other side of the Darro valley. In fact, part of the signage was printed with the initial location. The move to the Plaza de los Aljibes, because of the difficult access and the large number of people expected, was decided on June 8. Ram\u00f3n G\u00f3mez de la Serna, music director Kurt Schindler and musicologist John B. Trend and others attended.<\/p>\n

The results of the contest were as follows: the honorary prize was declared void; the Zuloaga prize of one thousand pesetas went to Diego Berm\u00fadez, El Tenazas (The Tongs)<\/em><\/a>; a second prize of one thousand pesetas was awarded to Manolo Caracol<\/a>. Also awarded prizes were Carmen Salinas, Frasquito Yerbabuena<\/a> and Jos\u00e9 Soler (500 pesetas each). Other smaller prizes rewarded the art of La Gazpacha, Conchita Sierra and La Goyita. The guitar prizes two hundred and fifty pesetas each were awarded to Jos\u00e9 Cu\u00e9llar and Ni\u00f1o de Huelva.<\/p>\n

\"Caricature<\/a>
Caricature drawn by Antonio L\u00f3pez Sancho in which 31 characters linked to the Flamenco Song Contest appear \/ Photo: Centro Art\u00edstico of Granada<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Identification of the different personalities, artists and promoters of that first Flamenco Song Contest, among them Federico Garc\u00eda Lorca.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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