DAIMUZ

Daimuz

This is the finca de Daimuz on the road to Láchar, one of the properties Don Federico bought in 1895 with his first wife Matilde Palacios’ money. Francisco (Federico's brother) has very fond memories of this farmhouse. It is built where the river Cubillas flows into the Genil and has the beautiful name of Daimuz Bajo, he says. "We lived here when we were very young; the earliest memories I have are of Daimuz: I could hardly walk and my brother must have been about 5." He goes on to tell a story about a painter called Nicasio who came every year to paint the house, and after work liven up the social gatherings with his accordeon, while Don Federico would urge him, Francisco, who could hardly walk, remember, to dance.

(The family might have lived here permanently from about 1906-1908; but they would certainly have spent prolonged periods of time here and visited it regularly both before and after these dates .)

It is a fact that Lorca`s and his cousin Mercedes Delgado García’s families used to organise parties here together, and if they could they would get Luisillo el Camborio to come and liven things up by playing the guitar for them. (Luisillo died in 1904. For more information about him, return to Chauchina!)

Francisco tells that he and his brother liked to look at the ancient documents giving right of ownership to the farm. The oldest of these documents were written in Arabic. Daimuz, Gibson tells us, means the farmhouse of the cave.

 

 View from Daimuz towards the poplar-lined River Genil

Lorca himself, in an interview in 1934, says: “I love the earth. I feel bound to it with all my emotions. My earliest memories have a taste of earth. I remember being at Daimuz shortly after my father returned from the Exhibition in Paris (in 1900). He had bought one of the new ploughs that he had seen there, made of steel, that ploughed more deeply than any of the previous kind we’d had, and I was watching it as it churned up roots and rocks that had lied there undisturbed for centuries. Suddenly, the plough stopped. It had struck something hard. It was a chest containing Roman coins. I remember the image that I somehow associate today with Daphnis and Chloë.”*

Francisco implied in his book that this anecdote was only poetically true, being the product of his brother’s vivid imagination, but Gibson says that long after the death of the poet, remains of a Roman farmhouse were discovered here and they found not only thousands of coins, many portraying the she-wolf giving milk to Romulus and Remus, but also a great number of mosaics.
 

*Fue por el año 1906. Mi tierra, tierra de agricultores, había sido arado por los viejos arados de madera, que apenas arañaban la superficie. Y en aquel año, algunos labradores adquirieron los nuevos arados Brabant - el nombre me ha quedado para siempre en el recuerdo -, que habían sido premiados por su eficacia en la Exposición de Paris del año 1900. Yo, niño curioso, seguía por todo el campo el vigoroso arado de mi casa. Me gustaba ver cómo la enorme púa de acero abría un tajo en la tierra, tajo del que brotaban raíces en lugar de sangre. Una vez el arado se detuvo. Había tropezado en algo consistente. Un segundo más tarde, la hoja brillante de acero sacaba de la tierra un mosaico romano. Tenía un inscripción que ahora no recuerdo, aunque no sé por qué acude a mi memoria el nombre de los pastores Dafnis y Cloe.
Ese mi primer asombro artístico está unido a la tierra. Los nombres de Dafnis y Cloe tienen también sabor a tierra y a amor.

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From here, we can  go on to the village of Láchar;
return to Valderrubio and visit the  Vega de Zujaira;
or  return to the map.
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