The home of Manuel de Falla

Manuel De Falla came from his native Cadiz to rent this house in the 1920's, because he wanted to find inspiration among the gypsies of the Sacromonte for his passionate flamenco operas. He left Granada hurriedly when the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, taking refuge in Argentina, from which he never returned. Half a century later, the families of his granadino friends got together to redecorate the house with the maestro's personal objects, which they had lovingly conserved, as a shrine to his memory.

The result is a cultural jewelry box, with Don Manuel's personal belongings strewn all about as if he were still living there, and with a joyous disarray which belies the rather pedantic name of the place, Casa-Museo de Manuel de Falla. The walls are covered with photos of Federico García Lorca, harpsichordist Wanda Landowska, Claude Debussy and other artists who came to Granada to visit the composer. His piano and typewriter seem to await the maestro's hand in his studio overlooking the plain - very different now to what it was then, crisscrossed with apartment blocks and motorways.

De Falla was a notorious hypochondriac and maniac for cleanliness, who spent four hours each morning washing himself; in the bathroom we see hanging from its hook the rubber enema which he used as regularly as a toothbrush. There is also the chair which was specially made so that his friends could carry him out into the garden on the days when he felt poorly, which was most

of the time. In spite of the undeniable eroticism of his music he led a chaste and austere life; it is said that when he was young he fell in love with a girl who rejected him, and after that he lost interest in love altogether...

In fact, the flamenco operas - surely the sexiest classical music ever written - became an embarrassment for him later in life and he often excused them as being his contribution to the musical nationalist movement, preferring to devote himself to composing operas in the Renaissance style such as The Altarpiece of Master Perez which, with its tinkling harpsichords and dissonant cantatas, one would have to be a very cultivated Spaniard to fully enjoy. He lived until the end of his life with his unmarried sister, also deeply religious, as the small chapel which has been reinstalled in her bedroom shows. On Don Manuel's wall there is a prettily framed dispensation from Purgatory made out in his name and signed by the Pope.

The urchins who lived in the quarter soon realized that their eccentric neighbour had a horror of noise, and whenever they needed some pocket money they would bang on tins and chant in front of the door, until Manuel's sister came out to shoo them away with a few coins. The odd couple were known for their Christian charity and fed the poor people of the neighbourhood every day in their kitchen.

The house itself has been conserved down to the smallest details such as the electrical fittings with plaited cables and wooden switches, all of which makes the visitor feel as if he were not only visiting the home of a genius, but also entering into the past of a country.