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The first part of Machado's poem “The Crime Was in Granada” is called “The Crime,” and it describes, or imagines, the assassination of Lorca. The first line of the poem says that Lorca “was seen, surrounded by rifles.” By saying that the writer is “seen,” Machado reinforces his idea that what occurred was a hideous “crime,” since Lorca's having been seen in this context is akin to a crime having been witnessed. Notably, also, this first line declines to humanize Lorca's murderers—they amount to no more than the “rifles” they are carrying: “He was seen, surrounded by rifles.”

In the next three lines, the setting of Lorca's journey to his death is imagined and described: he is escorted outside of the city (“down a long street”), into the surrounding countryside, in the “chill before dawn, with the stars still out.” This simple description of Lorca's last...