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Lorca 1898 - 1936 (38)

As I have not worried to be born, I do not worry to die.


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Federico García Lorca (June 5, 1898 - August 18, 1936) was one of the most important Spanish poets and playwrights. He was born in a small village in Granada, his father was a farmer and his mother a piano teacher; she first taught him music. He attended a Jesuit school and, under pressure from his father, enrolled in the Law School of the University of Granada, which he soon abandonrd in order to pursue a career in literature, music and painting. In 1919 he settled in the Student Dormitory of the University of Madrid, which at the time functioned as an open university and cultural center. At that time he composed his first poems that were published in 1921, entitled Book of Poems. In 1922 he published "Cante Jondo" (it means an old folk song, in the style of flamenco).

In 1928 he published "Romanthero Gitano", another important poetry collection, while in 1929, thanks to a scholarship, he visited New York, USA, where he was amazed by the American way of life, the omnipotence of money and the lack of spiritual life. He records his experiences in the collection "The Poet in New York", while in the following years he chooses theatrical writing as his main occupation. By 1934 he was completing his leading works: The House of Bernarda Alba, Damned Marriage, Germa, Mourning for Ignatius Sanchez Mechias. In December 1934, his play "Germa" provoked the reaction of the extreme right, groups of fascists provoked verbal episodes.

At the beginning of 1936 he wrote a proclamation of writers against fascism, in July of the same year, the Spanish Civil War broke out, on the 19th of the month Franco's fascists occupied Granada. Federico, 3 days earlier, had left Madrid and had arrived in Granada. He realized the danger when the anti-government forces took control of the city and executed without much procedure anyone they considered an enemy, such as his brother-in-law and mayor of the city. Lorca had not joined any political party but had defended democracy in all his speeches, had written works that the far right did not like, had written an anti-fascist text and was probably homosexual; all that made him a target for fascists. of Franco.

He hid in a friend's house but was found on August 17, 1936. On August 19, at dawn, at the age of 38, Lorca was executed by a detachment of 12 people, consisting of police, volunteers and detainees, who were forced to commit the murder under threat of execution. Most of them did not even know who they had been ordered to kill. He became one of the 20,000 to 30,000 Spaniards executed in the Granada region simply because they were considered supporters of democracy or the left, members of trade unions, or teachers or journalists, or writers or homosexuals. His body has never been found, despite the efforts made and the opening of mass graves in the area. His work was banned in Spain until 1953, when a censored part of it was allowed. Only after Franco's death in 1975 was it possible for all his works to be published freely.