Federico García Lorca

Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca was a Spanish poet, playwright, and theatre director born on 5 June 1898 and killed on 19 August 1936. He became internationally famous as a key figure of the Generation of '27, a group of poets who brought European movements like symbolism, futurism, and surrealism into Spanish literature. His first major success came with *Romancero gitano* (Gypsy Ballads, 1928), a poetry collection about life in his home region of Andalusia. His work mixed traditional Andalusian themes with avant-garde styles. After living in New York City from 1929 to 1930—a period later described in the posthumously published *Poeta en Nueva York* (Poet in New York, 1942)—he went back to Spain and wrote his most famous plays: *Blood Wedding* (1932), *Yerma* (1934), and *The House of Bernarda Alba* (1936). García Lorca was homosexual and experienced depression after his relationship with sculptor Emilio Aladrén Perojo ended. He also had a close emotional bond with Salvador Dalí, who later said he rejected García Lorca’s sexual advances. At the start of the Spanish Civil War, Nationalist forces assassinated him. His remains have never been recovered, and the reason for his killing is still debated. Some believe he was targeted because he was gay, a socialist, or both; others think a personal quarrel was the cause. He was born in Fuente Vaqueros, a small town 17 km west of Granada in southern Spain. His father, Federico García Rodríguez, was a wealthy landowner who profited from the sugar industry boom, owning a farm in the fertile valley near Granada and a comfortable villa in the city. His mother, Vicenta Lorca Romero, was a teacher. In 1905 the family moved to the nearby town of Valderrubio (then called Asquerosa), and in 1909, when Federico was 11, they relocated to Granada so he could attend high school. Their best-known home there was the summer house Huerta de San Vicente, on what was then the city’s outskirts. García Lorca always stressed the importance of living close to nature, praising his rural upbringing. All three homes—in Fuente Vaqueros, Valderrubio, and Huerta de San Vicente—are now museums. After finishing secondary school in 1915, he studied at the University of Granada, taking courses in law, literature, and composition. As a teenager, he felt a stronger connection to music than to literature. At age 11 he began six years of piano lessons with Antonio Segura Mesa, a harmony teacher and composer at the local conservatory. Segura inspired García Lorca’s dream of a music career. His early artistic influences came from the scores of Claude Debussy, Frédéric Chopin, and Ludwig van Beethoven. Later, through his friendship with composer Manuel de Falla, Spanish folklore became his inspiration. He did not turn to writing until Segura died in 1916, and his first prose works—such as “Nocturne,” “Ballade,” and “Sonata”—drew on musical forms. His circle of young intellectuals gathered at El Rinconcillo in the Café Alameda in Granada. In 1916 and 1917 he traveled through Castile, León, and Galicia in northern Spain with a university professor, who also encouraged him to write his first book, *Impresiones y paisajes* (Impressions and Landscapes), published at his father’s expense in 1918. Fernando de los Ríos persuaded García Lorca’s parents to let him move to the progressive, Oxbridge-inspired Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid in 1919, while he nominally attended classes at the University of Madrid. At the Residencia de Estudiantes, he befriended Luis Buñuel, Salvador Dalí, and many other creative artists who would become influential across Spain. He was mentored by poet Juan Ramón Jiménez and became close to playwright Eduardo Marquina and Gregorio Martínez Sierra, director of Madrid’s Teatro Eslava. In 1919–20, at Sierra’s invitation, he wrote and staged his first play, *The Butterfly’s Evil Spell*, a verse drama about the impossible love between a cockroach and a butterfly, with a supporting cast of other insects. The public laughed it off the stage after only four performances, an experience that shaped García Lorca’s attitude toward theatre audiences for the rest of his career. He later claimed that *Mariana Pineda*, written in 1927, was actually his first play. While at the Residencia, he pursued degrees in law and philosophy, though he was more interested in writing than in studying. His first book of poems, *Libro de poemas*, was published in 1921, collecting work written from 1918 and selected with help from his brother Francisco (nicknamed Paquito). The poems deal with religious faith, isolation, and nature, themes that had filled his earlier prose. In early 1922, in Granada, he joined composer Manuel de Falla to promote the Concurso de Cante Jondo, a festival aimed at elevating flamenco performance and its cante jondo style. During this period, García Lorca explored brief song forms, such as the poem “Orchard, March,” written between 1921 and 1924 and later collected in his book *Canciones*. The year before, he had begun writing *Poema del cante jondo* (“Poem of the Deep Song,” not published until 1931), so he naturally wrote an essay on flamenco art and began speaking publicly in support of the Concurso. At the music festival in June, he met the celebrated flamenco cantaor Manuel Torre.