This is the house of Frasquita Alba Sierra, the prototype for Bernarda Alba. Frasquita was born in 1858. She had a son and two daughters by her first husband, José Jiménez López, and another son and three more daughters with her second, Alejandro Rodríguez Capilla, who she married in 1893, at the age of 35. Frasquita died in 1924, a year before Alejandro. So we can see that, although Frasquita, like Bernarda, had five daughters,the exclusively female composition of the household is an invention of Lorca’s. Another invention is the servant “La Poncia” working here, for although a maid of that name did live in the village, she never served in this house.

Lorca’s cousin, Mercedes García Delgado, daughter of Matilde García Rodríguez, lived in the house adjacent to that of Frasquita Alba and the two houses shared a well beneath the wall that divided the properties. Through this well you could hear clearly what was being said on the other side, which must have provided Lorca with some material for his play, written a good 10 years after the death of Frasquita.

Lorca seems never to have spoken to any of the daughters who, he said, passed him silently in the street, their eyes averted or cast on the ground.