GARCÍA LORCA BEFORE THE SPANISH WOKE

 These days Federico García Lorca (1898–1936) is all the rage in Spain. Some youngsters seem to have discovered him for ideological reasons rather than because they have been reading him. They harp on the theme that his death was an asesinato injustificado -an “unjustified murder”- as if murder could ever be justified. The Spanish literary Woke movement claims him as its banner and raison d’être.

But Federico was honored and popular long before these still-wet-behind-the-ears activists discovered him. My uncle, Reyes Carbonell, wrote and published a book of poems in 1951, Poesías en aire y tierra, which was dotted with verde, green, all over, a small indication of Lorca’s influence on poets of the time. I myself paid homage to him in one of my early articles, “Tres dramas existenciales de Federico García Lorca (Yerma, La casa de Bernarda Alba, Bodas de sangre),” published in October 1965 in Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos. It can still be read in the Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes.

Lorca’s murder was indeed a tragedy, but he was already a celebrated poet and dramatist and had made his name long before he was killed. I think it is terrible that dead writers should be turned into ideological weapons to be wielded against political enemies. Writers belong to literature, not to parties.

May I suggest that, instead of arguing over who owns Lorca, you read “La casada infiel”? In the original Spanish, of course - as poetry should be read.