| Federico García Lorca is presumed to
be buried in a mass grave in Viznar, a village which lies at the
foot of the Sierra Nevada Mountains near Granada in Spain, Europe. He was regarded by
Franco's fascists as a dangerous intellectual and was arrested on
the 16th August 1936. Three days later he was dragged into a field, along with a schoolmaster
and two bullfighters, and shot. His writings were subsequently burnt in
the main Plaza in Granada.
While a student in Madrid, Lorca became friends with the
surrealist painter Salvador Dali and the film maker Luis Buñuel.
Dali designed the set for Lorca's play Mariana Pineda which
was first staged in 1927.
In 1929 Lorca traveled to New York. While in the Big Apple he
wrote Poeta en Nueva York and also began El público
(The Audience) - an explicitly homosexual play.
After returning to Spain, Lorca was appointed Director of the
Madrid University Theatre 'La Barraca'. The company toured the
provinces giving free performances of classical Spanish plays.
Lorca is, today, regarded
as one of Spain's greatest 20th Century poets and playwrights.
However, due to the fascist regime, his plays were not performed
again until the 1940's and certain bans on his work remained until
1971.
Lorca's Andalusian upbringing had a profound influence on his
writing. One of his finest poems, Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez
Mejías, is an elegy for his friend the Andulusian bullfighter (see extract
below).
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