“Round trip” in Víznar, Granada, by the architect Carmen Moreno

DATE

29.09.2026

This landscape intervention of 2006 is named after a poem by one of the most renowned authors of Spanish lyric poetry: Vuelta de paseo, by Federico García Lorca.

The intervention consists of a periurban park conceived as a place for walking and, at the same time, as a hydraulic infrastructure due to its function as a water channel. Known as Aynadamar, it is the water supply artery of the Albaicín neighborhood, in Granada, since the Arabic era.

The project is based on developing certain elements that connect some pergolas with others: small and narrow terraces built at the time to level the slope and allow cultivation. The connections between these terraces lead to places of rest designed for sitting and contemplating the views, drawing free-form paths.

The author of the project, Carmen Moreno, was particularly struck by the wide variety of names by which the place was known, which recounted the different episodes of its history. The estate was called the Cortijo de las Colonias for having served as a children’s summer camp, and also the Cortijo de las Pasaderas, in allusion to the steps of the water-mill mills, some of which were found during the execution of the project. However, it was its use during the years of the Civil War that definitively marked its memory, as it became the last prison for the condemned to death, among whom was Federico García Lorca himself.

The project recovers the memory of this landscape through three routes: the pedestrian path, the water path and the transparent path. All of them articulate a dialogue between architecture, landscape, history and archaeology, while optimizing the resources of the environment and showing a meticulous work in the use of materials.

These routes narrate the events lived in the enclave over time. The pedestrian path runs along the old dirt trail, blurred by the years. The water path, the main axis restored, unfolds like a carpet alongside the irrigation channel, bringing freshness and the sound of water to the route and integrating restored pools. Finally, the transparent path or memory path materializes the symbolic dimension of the project: it represents the silenced passage of the condemned, abruptly interrupting to evoke the last walk of Lorca and so many others who died there, as a metaphor for an unfinished life.

The water from the pools waters the olive canopies and the neighborhood gardens assigned to the townspeople. Thus, when the flow runs from the acequia and overflows, it moistens the stone outlet of each pool and floods the verses of the famous poem, carved into the very rock.

The continuity and resonance of Lorca’s figure continue to transcend disciplines: this September 25th, The Black Ball, a feature film, arrives at the cinema halls, which also draws its starting point from the legacy of the Granadan author.