María la Canastera
Who is María la Canastera?
María Cortés Heredia, María la Canastera, was born on February 27, 1913, in Granada, daughter of Juan Cortés “el Cagachín”, a basket weaver by trade, from whom she took her stage name. She grew up amid the zambras of the Sacromonte, where she began dancing from a very young age, and at barely sixteen, in 1929, she performed at the Barcelona International Exposition with Manolo Amaya’s group, dancing before King Alfonso XIII alongside Carmen Amaya.
Career
She shared bills and stages with figures such as La Niña de los Peines, Angelillo, Pepe Marchena and Pepe Pinto, and appeared in the film “María de la O” alongside Carmen Amaya. She recorded nineteen albums and made numerous television appearances, as well as performing at the Feria Internacional del Campo in Madrid in 1976. She turned her cave on the Sacromonte into a landmark venue that attracted international celebrities such as Anthony Quinn, Ingrid Bergman, Alain Delon, Henry Fonda, Yul Brynner, Ernest Hemingway and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, as well as the composer Agustín Lara, who is said to have returned one night after retiring to his hotel, overcome by nostalgia, and kept the party going until dawn.
Style
She danced straight on the earthen floor, without colored spotlights, always favoring authenticity over artificial spectacle; her zambra dance, spontaneous and often improvised, became a hallmark of the gitano Sacromonte.
Legacy
She was included among the hundred most important figures of 20th-century Granada — the only gitana woman on that list — and has had a statue on the Avenida de la Constitución since 2010. Artists such as Los Habichuela, Paco Cortés and El Polaco passed through and trained in her cave. She died on October 30, 1966, and her son Enrique Carmona, El Canastero, keeps the cave just as she left it, carrying on her legacy.