Juan Ramón Jiménez’s visit with the García Lorca family made a difference in the life and work of two of the most important Spanish writers of the 20th century, and a new book reconstructs that meeting.

In August 1924, Federico García Lorca began writing the Gypsy Ballads. At almost the same time, Juan Ramón Jiménez had written a beautiful romance, difficult to place among the Nobel prize winner’s works, entitled Generalife. He dedicated it to Isabel García Lorca (the “magical being” of Generalife), whom he had just spent almost two weeks with (June 21-July 3) in Granada, along with her with her older brother, Generation of '27 poet Federico, and their whole family hosting. The journey and city made such a significant impression on him that the memory stayed with him forever – “You don’t have many days like those in life,” he wrote 21 years later. It would also inspire the posthumously published Olvidos de Granada (Forgotten Granada). This work, along with his Españoles de tres mundos (Spaniards from Three Worlds) meant “the birth of modern prose”, according to fellow Generation of ’27 poet Luis Cernuda.

Read more here: El País