magdalena

I think she was more based on Margarita Manso, who was a contempory of Lorca and Dali during their time at the residencia.

There were some very important women in both Dali and Lorca’s life. One of these women, who they met while at the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid, was Margarita Manso.

Margarita Manso was born in Valladolid in 1908 and later lived in Madrid where her mother was a dressmaker. At the age of 15, she enrolled at The Special School of Painting, Sculpture and Engraving. She studied there from the fall of 1925 until spring of 1927, passing all her subjects. She probably first met Lorca in 1925, while she probably didn’t meet Dali until the spring of 1926. She was described as being very slim, almost boyish and very pretty. And she was also very modern, liberated and according to Dali, ‘fascinated by both him and Lorca’.

During their time in Madrid together this group, along with another woman from the school, Maruja Mallo, also a painter did some pretty interesting things. Influenced by Paris fashion, Margarita and her friends started a new fashion trend in Madrid, called sinsombrerismo or nonhattism. The trend was nothing more than not wearing a hat, a sign of emancipation. In Madrid in the 1920s, this was very scandalous. Not wearing a hat was like not wearing clothes. People would look at them horrified and even went so far as to yell at them or throw things at them when they were out and about the city. Even Dali, who loved to wear hats, joined the movement when he returned to Madrid after being suspended.

At another time, Margarita, Maruja, Dali and Lorca went to visit the Benedictine monastery of Santo Domingo de Silos. A monk would not let the ladies enter the church, informing the group “No skirts here”. Rather than be deterred, Margarita and Maruja took the jackets from Lorca and Dali and put them on as pants. They then tucked their hair up under their caps and sneaked inside. Margarita’s boldness and willingness to blur the lines between the genders and even between social classes endeared her both to Dali and Lorca.

Ian Gibson, in his book The Shameful Life of Salvador Dali, tells us
that in his bedside conversation with Dali, Dali reveals that it was Margarita Manso that Lorca had made love to while Dali had watched. Dali mentions that the girl in question, who from Lorca’s point of view had the advantage of being virtually without breasts (“Federico hated breasts”). Dali alludes to this incident in one of his letters to Lorca written in the spring of 1926 saying “I haven’t been able to understand Margarita at all either. Was she stupid? Mad?” Dali also mentions that afterwards, Lorca had held her and whispered four verses from Lorca’s Gypsy Ballad, Thamar and Amnon, in her ear.