Federico García Lorca

Federico García Lorca was born to a wealthy landowning family in Andalusia (southern Spain). Raised between the city of Granada and the small towns of Fuente Vaqueros and Valderrubio/Asquerosa (where this play is set), Lorca took an interest in the piano and music composition as an adolescent. One of his university professors convinced him to study law and philosophy in Madrid, where he began writing and befriended a generation of prominent artists, including luminaries like the filmmaker Luis Buñuel and the painter Salvador Dalí. In fact, García Lorca was reportedly in love with Dalí; homosexuality and unfulfillable desire were constant themes in his work. The 1928 poetry collection Gypsy Ballads won García Lorca international recognition for his depiction of rural Andalusian life. He spent the following year at Columbia University in New York, which shaped his thinking about capitalism and modern life. He returned to Spain to write plays and direct a theater company called La Barraca, which traveled around the Spanish countryside, performing classic plays. But in July 1936, fascists in the Spanish military launched a coup against the democratically-elected government and took control of several of the country’s cities, including Granada, where García Lorca lived. The following month, at just 38 years old, he was arrested and executed as part of the nationalists’ social cleansing campaign. He is often seen as a martyr in Spain today, and his body still has never been found.