His adventure with La Barraca (1932)
On April 14, 1931, the Second Republic was proclaimed in Spain, so public freedoms were recovered after the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, new social and cultural policies were promoted that, however, raised a forceful response on the political right opposition.
Federico sided with the new regime. Lorca gave numerous lectures on cante jondo [1] and on his experience in New York, although his greatest commitment was the creation of La Barraca, a company to disseminate classical Spanish theater in rural Spain.
He says: “La Barraca will be portable. A nomadic and free theater that will travel the hot roads of Castile, the dusty routes of Andalusia, all the roads that cross the Spanish fields. It will penetrate the villages, towns and hamlets, and will assemble in the small squares their puppet stages and sheds[2]”.
In their debut, in 1932, after rehearsals at the Student Residence, they performed three short works by Cervantes in Galicia and Asturias.
[1] cante: any genre of Andalusian or similar popular singing. Cante jondo: the most characteristic Andalusian singing, of deep feeling.
[2] shed: platform set up quickly.
Success and decline
In February 1933 they staged La tierra de Alvargonzález, by Antonio Machado and Fuenteovejuna, by Lope de Vega. The tribute to Lope was repeated in 1935 on the occasion of the commemoration of the third centenary of his death. The more they acted, the greater the enthusiasm of the spectators in rural Spain, as many of them had never attended a dramatic performance.
For their part, the right criticized them very harshly and accused the company of being an instrument of political propaganda at the service of the newly proclaimed Republic, in such a way that they responded to the applause of the public with protests to show their contempt.
After the political changes brought about by the Black Biennium[3], aid to La Barraca decreased until its virtual disappearance in 1935.
[3] Black Biennium: period of the Second Republic during which the center-right republican parties allied with the Catholic right governed.
Federico in Argentina (1933)
In the summer of 1933, while Federico García Lorca continued to tour with La Barraca, Bodas de sangre premiered in Montevideo and Buenos Aires by the company of Lola Membrives. The success was so great that the producer suggested he go to America to direct a new production and give several lectures to a dedicated audience.
His trip to Buenos Aires revealed to him the true dimension of his literature in Latin America.
Lorca did not hesitate. On September 29, he left for Buenos Aires in the company of the set designer Manuel Fontanals. After two stops in Rio de Janeiro and Montevideo, they arrived in Argentina on October 13. Between that month and March 1934, Lorca directed, in addition to Bodas de sangre, Mariana Pineda, La zapatera prodigiosa and an adaptation of El retablillo de don Cristóbal.
A very popular writer
After setting foot in South America, he was amazed to see the popularity he had in Argentina. If the trip to New York, in 1929, was for the poet the discovery of the modern city that had so much influence on his work, the trip to Buenos Aires revealed to him the true dimension of his literature in Latin America. Lorca granted many interviews, one of them to Pablo Neruda, then consul of Chile in Argentina.
Bodas de sangre reached 150 performances in Buenos Aires, which generated income that allowed him economic independence for the first time.
The bullfighter and the cry (1934)
Federico returned to Spain from Argentina when he was about to turn 36, in full creative maturity and backed by international recognition. Upon his return he receives the tribute of La Barraca. In July he returned to the Huerta de San Vicente, the family summer home for Saint Federico’s Day, and during the following months he finished his play Yerma and his collection of poems Diván del Tamarit, which he did not publish due to the war.
In the summer of 1934, on August 11, his friend, the bullfighter Ignacio Sánchez Mejías, was gored in the Manzanares bullring that would end his life shortly after. Lorca dedicated one of the best elegies[4] of Spanish poetry to him, the Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Mejías, which was published a year later.
[4] Elegy: lyrical composition lamenting the death of a person or any other negative event.
In September he returned to Madrid and began writing Doña Rosita la soltera o El lenguaje de las flores, and on December 29, he premiered Yerma at the Teatro Español in Madrid with actress Margarita Xirgu.
His trip to Barcelona
Federico García Lorca, starting in 1935, increases the social tone and sympathy with the most disadvantaged in his public statements with the excuse of theater: “A sensitive and well-oriented theater […] can change sensitivity in a few years from a town; and a destroyed theater, where hooves replace wings, can make an entire nation vulgar.”
In September he travels to Barcelona with Margarita Xirgu where he will remain until December. The Xirgu triumphs in Barcelona with the premiere of Yerma and then Blood Wedding. On October 6, Federico offers a recital for the workers’ ateneos[5]:
“There was an immense audience that filled the theater,” he writes in a letter to his parents, “and then the entire Rambla[6] of Catalonia was full of an audience that listened through the loudspeakers, since the event was broadcast on Radio […]. Afterwards I had to endure a parade of people shaking my hand for more than an hour and a half […].
Of course, the right will take all these things to continue the campaign against me and against Margarita, but it doesn’t matter. It is almost convenient that they do so, that they know at once the fields we are treading. Of course, in Spain you cannot be neutral.”
[5] Ateneo: cultural association, generally of a scientific or literary nature.
[6] Rambla: wide, tree-lined street, generally with a central area.
The mystery of the flowers (1935)
On the night of December 12, 1935, Doña Rosita la soltera o El lenguaje de las flores premiered. From that day on, every afternoon, before the performance begins, he receives a mysterious bouquet of flowers in the dressing room.
In the end, he finds out that it is a gift from the florists on La Rambla. In correspondence, Lorca and Margarita Xirgu dedicate a tribute to the florists: “Tonight, my youngest and most beloved daughter, Rosita the single, Miss Rosita, Doña Rosita, […] wanted to work for the nice florists on La Rambla.”
On those days, she leaves La Barraca due to lack of time. In Santiago de Compostela the Six Galician Poems published by her friend, the writer and journalist Eduardo Blanco-Amor, appear.
Sonetos del amor oscuro (1935)
In contrast to the atmosphere of insecurity and political violence that was being generated in Spain, and that would explode[29] in 1936, Federico García Lorca wrote in 1935, during a stay in Valencia, some of the compositions of the most famous series of his love and secret poetry: Los sonetos[7] del amor oscuro, a collection of eleven love poems. The sonnets remained retained by his heirs until their complete publication in the newspaper ABC in 1984.
Who inspired them?
Two years earlier he had met a young 19-year-old actor, Juan Ramírez de Lucas, who had been sent to Madrid by his family to study Public Administration. Lorca maintained an ardent relationship with Ramírez, who kept the secret for 70 years, that inspired the sonnets.
Lorca promised Juan Ramírez de Lucas, then a minor, to turn him into a great actor, and invited him to accompany him on the tour of Mexico that he had planned with Margarita Xirgu in 1936. Ramírez left a diary that remains unpublished.
[7] Sonnet: poetic composition of fourteen verses.
However, Ian Gibson, the Hispanist[8] of Irish origin who became a Spanish citizen and a specialist in Federico García Lorca, maintains that the inspirer of the passionate series of sonnets was Rafael Rodríguez Rapún, with whom Lorca had another romantic relationship until the beginning of the Civil war.
At the end of 1936, Rodríguez Rapún, after learning of the murder of his friend, decided to enlist [9] in the Republican army. On August 18, 1938, just two years after Federico’s murder, Rapún died at the front[10] due to injuries caused by the explosion of a bomb a week earlier.
[8] Hispanist: a specialist in the Spanish language and culture.
[9] To enlist: to register as a soldier.
[10] Front: an area or line of territory where armies confront each other with some permanence or duration.
Violent Spain (1936)
Federico García Lorca was not indifferent to the growing political tension that invaded Spain and that ended up causing the rebellion against the Republic in July 1936 and the outbreak of the Civil War. Lorca supported the Second Republic more than ever, through his public demonstrations.
His activity does not decrease. In January the first edition of Bodas de sangre and Primeras canciones appeared in Héroe magazine. He participates in the tribute to Rafael Alberti and his wife, María Teresa León, and shortly after in the tribute to Luis Cernuda, his colleague from the Generation of ’27.
In May, he signs the adhesion that the Frente Popular[11] dedicates to André Malraux, Jean Cassou and Henri Lenormand. In June he finishes Yerma and writes the first act of Los sueños de mi prima Aurelia.
[11] Frente Popular: union of Spanish left-wing parties created in January 1936.
Rumors of a military coup
However, as the climate of violence in Madrid was increasing, along with rumors of a military coup, on July 13, 1936, Federico decided to leave Madrid and go to Granada to celebrate his name day and his father’s at the Huerta de San Vicente, as was customary in the family.
That day he visits the offices of the magazine Cruz y Raya [12] where, not finding its director, José Bergamín, he left him a note and the manuscript of Poeta en Nueva York, which would be published after his assassination.
[12] Cruz y Raya was a Spanish cultural magazine directed by José Bergamín, published between 1933 and 1936. Writers such as Federico García Lorca, Luis Cernuda, Ramón Sijé and Miguel Hernández collaborated with it.
Before leaving for his land, in an interview that appeared in the newspaper El Sol, he made a definition of Granada that could have influenced its tragic end: “A land […] where the worst bourgeoisie in Spain is currently found.”
Refuge in Granada
On the same day of departure for Granada, July 13, on the night train, Federico García Lorca gave his friend Rafael Martínez Nadal the manuscript of El Público, a sample of his “unrepresentable” theater[40] with the commission of destroy it if something happened to it.
The newspaper El Defensor de Granada announces Lorca’s arrival on the front page. The poet took refuge in the Huerta de San Vicente where he spent that tragic summer until he fled to the family home of his friend Luis Rosales. On July 20, the rebellion triumphed in the capital of Granada and strong repression began following instructions from General Queipo de Llano, one of the military coup leaders.
Days of anguish
One of the first people arrested was Lorca’s brother-in-law, Manuel Fernández-Montesinos, who was married to his sister Concha and was then the socialist mayor of Granada. He was executed by firing squad against the cemetery walls, along with other prominent Republican politicians and intellectuals, on August 16, 1936.
During Lorca’s stay at the Huerta de san Vicente, two inspections took place. The first, on August 6, was conducted by a group of Falangists[13]. On August 9, three days later, another group, consisting mostly of volunteers from two nearby villages, arrived at the Huerta. They were looking for the tenant Gabriel Perea to force him to reveal the whereabouts of his brothers.
Among them were the Roldán brothers, whose family had lost several lawsuits in the 1920s against Federico’s father over a property in Valderrubio. Gabriel Perea was tied to a cherry tree and mistreated in front of everyone. At that moment, Lorca began to think about fleeing.
[13] Falangist: a person belonging to Falangism, a Spanish political movement promoted by the Falange, a party whose ideology was inspired by Italian fascism and formed the basis of the Franco regime.
Federico’s arrest (1936)
On the night of August 9, the family’s chauffeur took Federico García Lorca to the house of his friend, the poet Luis Rosales. The Rosales brothers were all leaders of the Falange, and Lorca thought it was the safest place.
However, on the afternoon of August 16, a group led by a former right-wing deputy, Ramón Ruiz Alonso, who had accused him of being a Russian spy, a homosexual, and of “having done more harm with his pen than others with pistols,” arrived at the house accompanied by other fascists[14] and arrested him.
[14] Fascist: supporter of Fascism (authoritarian and anti-democratic attitude, particularly referring to acts carried out by armed rebels).
His last hours (1936)
Federico García Lorca left the Civil Government building for Víznar between August 17 and 19, according to various theories.
Lorca, dressed in pajamas, arrived at La Colonia (a large house originally intended for school vacations by the rebels to be used as a prison) aboard a vehicle, with the bullfighters Juan Arcoyas and Francisco Galadí, and a common criminal.
At La Colonia, the teacher Dióscoro Galindo and a young man accused of armed robbery were already imprisoned, awaiting their execution.
There, on the ground floor, Federico García Lorca spent the final hours of his detention before being executed on August 18 at a location still unknown today, situated between the towns of Víznar and Alfacar in the province of Granada.
