Federico García Lorca

I am in Granada again this Christmas visiting my sister and brother-in-law, and today I walked up to the majestic palace of Alhambra. On my walk down I came across some small cafes and little shops, and it was there I came across some more postcards to rival the already beautiful images of Granada and flamenco dancers that I found yesterday at another little shop near my sister's house. The postcards I found were of this captivating young man that just looked back at me so elegantly and with such style I just needed to learn more about him. I asked my sister who he was, and she said he was a famous gay poet from Granada; Federico García Lorca. 

(below left) Salvador Dalí y Federico García 
Lorca  - Cadaqués, Girona 1927
On further research at home, I found out he was in fact possibly the most important Spanish poet and dramatist of the twentieth century. He was a member of the 'Generation of 1927', a group of writers who advocated avant-gardism in literature. He worked on film productions alongside Dalí and Louis Buñuel, forming a strong and passionate friendship with Dalí, which then led to Dalí refusing these advances. He later interpreted that Dalí and Buñuel's short film Un Chien Andalou (1928) was based on him, which he saw as an attack upon himself, and his homosexuality.

Sadly, García Lorca was assassinated by Nationalist militia a month after the Spanish Civil War broke out, in August 1936. It is thought the motives of his death were due to his left-wing views, Republican sympathies and homosexuality - all of which made him a target for followers of Franco at the start of the civil war.

His place of rest is still unknown, although it was presumed he was placed beside a winding mountain road that connects the villages of Viznar and Alfácar. Archaeologists from Granada started to excavate the grave just a couple of months ago, in October. Sadly, only a week ago nothing was found, and so they gave up the search, failing to find his grave. The mystery remains unsolved.

 

"You will never understand that I love you/ because you sleep in me and are asleep./I hide you, weeping, persecuted/ by a voice of penetrating steel."
-  Sonetos del Amor Oscuro, Federico García Lorca