Zambra María la Canastera

This guide to Zambra Maria la Canastera in Granada follows a founding date historians can't agree on, and the woman behind it who mattered more than any year: Maria Cortes Heredia, born in Granada in 1913, daughter of a basket weaver. It traces her rise from open-air dancing in Sacromonte to sharing a stage with Carmen Amaya at the Barcelona World's Fair, and the choice that brought her home again. Two of the cave's rooms remain exactly as her family lived in them, kitchen and bedrooms carved into the hillside beside the stage.