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The Murder of Federico Garcia Lorca

Back in the day on August 19th, 1936, Spanish poet and playwright Federico Garcia Lorca was murdered. With the initial phases of the civil war in Spain raging, the avant-garde dramatist had taken refuge in the province of Granada were he was born thirty-eight years before his death. Garcia Lorca, sensing that his life was in danger, sought safety in the family home of fellow poet Luis Rosales. Members of the fascist Nationalists found the revered poet, however, and abducted him. Days later, Garcia Lorca was riddled with bullets and buried in a mass grave. The poet’s biographer Ian Gibson has argued that the Garcia Lorca’s homosexuality had certainly played a part in his execution. For that reason and for the reason having become a symbol of fascist repression, Garcia Lorca’s literary achievements were banned and later censored by the Franco dictatorship.

As Gibson also notes in his latest book, the sexual orientation of the free thinking wordsmith had been a taboo of a decades-long silence by Spain’s literary establishment and even members of his own family.

For Uprising, this is your truth professa’ saying it’s no mystery why they conceal our people’s history