Federico García Lorca (June 5, 1898 – August 18/19, 1936) was one of the most important Spanish poets and playwrights. He was born in a small village near Granada. His father was a farmer and his mother was a piano teacher, who first introduced him to music. He attended a Jesuit school and, under pressure from his father, enrolled in the Law School of the University of Granada, but soon abandoned his studies in order to devote himself to literature, music, and painting.
In 1919 he moved to the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid, which at the time was an important cultural center. There he met many of the leading artists and intellectuals of his generation. His first poems were published in 1921 under the title *Book of Poems*. In 1922 he became involved with *cante jondo*, the deep traditional song of Andalusia, closely related to flamenco.
In 1928 he published *Romancero Gitano* (*Gypsy Ballads*), one of his most important poetry collections. In 1929, thanks to a scholarship, he travelled to New York, where he was deeply impressed and disturbed by the American way of life, the power of money, and what he saw as a lack of spiritual depth. He recorded these experiences in *Poet in New York*. In the following years, he turned mainly to theatre and completed some of his greatest works, including *Blood Wedding*, *Yerma*, *The House of Bernarda Alba*, and *Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías*. In December 1934, the performance of *Yerma* provoked strong reactions from the far right, and fascist groups caused disturbances.
At the beginning of 1936 Lorca signed a manifesto by writers against fascism. In July of the same year, the Spanish Civil War broke out. On July 19, Franco’s forces occupied Granada. Lorca had left Madrid three days earlier and had returned to Granada. He soon realized the danger, as the rebel forces were executing, often without trial, anyone they considered an enemy, including his brother-in-law, who was mayor of the city.
Lorca had not joined any political party, but he had defended democracy in his speeches, had written works disliked by the far right, had signed an anti-fascist text, and was probably homosexual. All this made him a target of Franco’s supporters.
He hid in the house of a friend, but was arrested on August 16 or 17, 1936. At dawn, probably on August 18 or 19, at the age of 38, Lorca was executed by a firing squad made up of police, volunteers, and detainees who were forced to take part under threat of death. Most of them did not even know who they had been ordered to kill.
He became one of the thousands of Spaniards executed in the Granada region simply because they were considered supporters of democracy or the left, members of trade unions, teachers, journalists, writers, or homosexuals. His body has never been found, despite later searches and the opening of mass graves in the area.
His work was banned in Spain until 1953, when only a censored selection was allowed to appear. Only after Franco’s death in 1975 could Lorca’s works be published freely in Spain.
