Of all the characters who have passed through Cadaqués — and plenty have, plenty of them famous — the most extraordinary painted nothing and wrote nothing. Her name was Lídia Noguer, she lived from 1866 to 1946, she sold the fish her husband and two sons brought in, and she was nearly illiterate. She was also a friend of Salvador and Anna Maria Dalí and of Federico García Lorca, she knew Gala, Buñuel, and Eugeni d'Ors, and she spent more than thirty years convinced she was the heroine of one of the most important novels in Catalan literature. This is her story, and it's true.
Who she was before all of it
Lídia de Cadaqués, known in the village as Lídia Sabana, was the daughter of a sailor and a woman who ran an inn. Both her mother and her mother-in-law were considered among the last witches of Cadaqués — which is how fishing villages used to describe women who knew things and lived life on their own terms.
She worked as a fishmonger: she sold the fish her husband and two sons caught. And she was a good enough cook that her house also worked as an inn and that she ended up cooking for people who came from elsewhere. That's the base on which everything else happened: a woman who worked standing up, in the street, with a basket.
September 1904
In September 1904, the writer and thinker Eugeni d'Ors stayed at her house. Years later, d'Ors published 'La Ben Plantada,' the work that would become the founding text of Noucentisme, with a heroine named Teresa.
From then on, Lídia developed the conviction — the studies that have looked into her speak of a delusion — that d'Ors had been inspired by her, and that she was the Ben Plantada. She held onto it for more than thirty years. It's not a charming anecdote: it's an idea that organised her entire life.
Learning to read in order to read herself
The detail that turns this story into something else is this: Lídia was a nearly illiterate woman who made the effort to learn to read and write. She carried 'La Ben Plantada' in her fish basket and recited long passages from memory.
Think about that for a second. A fishmonger from a Costa Brava village, in the early 20th century, learning to read as an adult so she could read the book she believed portrayed her, and carrying it every day among the fish. Whatever the truth about d'Ors and Teresa, that part really happened.
The woman who stood in the middle of it all
Lídia was one of the most influential women on three first-rank 20th-century artists: Federico García Lorca, Salvador Dalí, and Eugeni d'Ors. She was a friend of Salvador and Anna Maria Dalí and of Lorca, and she knew Gala Dalí, Luis Buñuel, and d'Ors, among other artists and intellectuals who passed through the village.
In other words, she wasn't local colour in other people's story: she was one of the central figures of the Cadaqués of those years. The Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí has dedicated studies of its own to her. When you walk through the village and hear who came here and what they did, remember that someone from Cadaqués was right in the middle of all of it, and she sold fish.