She is noted for promoting popular culture and was known in Llerena (Badajoz) as La Mujer de los Cuentos (The Woman of Tales).

[4] Durán along with members of the intellectual elite such as Hernandez de Soto, began collecting popular culture from Llerena's inhabitants.

Farmers, laborers, gardeners, and even children served as her sources for works that eventually became part of regenerationist initiatives that encouraged progress, education, literature, arts, and knowledge of local history.

[4] In her later life, Durán painted and supported the works of her son Demofilo, who became noted for his folkloric studies that covered the 1860s to the 1890s.

[8] She was said to have habitually read Durán's Romancero and Becquer's Leyendas not only to the young Antonio but to his brother Manuel, who also became a noted writer and poet.