English-language (Anglophone) studies of “The Crime Was in Granada,” considered on its own, are rare. Instead, most Anglophone criticism tends to be general estimations of Machado's work (his career as a poet), explorations of a group of poems (for example, a particular collected volume of poems), or examinations of some aspect of his work running throughout his career (for instance, the significance of fountains in his verse).

In terms of general estimations of Machado's poetic career, the criticism can be divided into two phases, according to Alan S. Trueblood. As Trueblood writes in “Antonio Machado and the Lyric of Ideas” (in Letter and Spirit in Hispanic Writers: Renaissance to Civil War), early critics of Machado were “disconcerted” by certain “changes of direction in successive stages of his career.” That is, some earlier critics had widely admired his first verse publications and then felt that changes in...