by Federico Garcia Lorca

Federico Garcia Lorca (1898-1936) was born in the Andalusian town of Fuente Vaqueros, but spent much of his youth in the nearby city of Granada. Many years later, he would be executed by a Falangist firing squad in that city during the early weeks of the Spanish Civil War. Lorca studied law at the University of Granada, but in 1919 he moved to Madrid to pursue his passion for art and literature. Although in the early 1920s he published both drama and poetry, it was not until he linked Spanish folklore with surrealist imagery in his collection of poems Gypsy Ballads (1928) that he earned national recognition. His theater during the 1920s alternated between comedy and avantgarde experimentation in works such as The Shoemaker’s Prodigious Wife (1926) and Once Five Years Pass (written in 1929 and 1930). In the 1930s...