Writing Poetry Can Endanger Your Health - Part Four by Dave Jaffe

The Short Life of Federico Garcia Lorca


  Federico Garcia Lorca was another outstanding Spanish speaking poet who lived a short life.He was born in Spain in 1898 and died there in 1936 at the age of 38.
    Lorca was a great poet whose books were translated into English under the titles of 'Songs' and 'The Gypsy Ballads'. Lorca lived in truly troubled times. He was left-leaning in Spain at a time when it was violently split between right and left wing political groups.
    "In 1907 and 1908," writes the British critic and novelist John Berger, "2,000 bombs exploded in the streets of Barcelona." Barcelona was one of Spain's biggest cities though it was not the capital city that Madrid was. Yet both cities, like the rest of Spain, were polarized in their politics. In 1936 Spain's armed forces, backed by conservatives, launched a coup against the democratic and left leaning government of Spain.
   Wherever they went, the military forces killed all the progressives they  could capture. In retaliation, left wing groups often did the same to their rightist opponents.
    A civil war then followed for the armed forces couldn't take over all of Spain at once.With the help of fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, the right wing army won the Spanish Civil War in 1939. General Francisco Franco, who ended up as the head of the armed forces, ruled Spain until his death in the 1970's.
      Lorca, like many other progressives died in the opening days of the civil war. Right wing army people captured him in 1936 and shot him dead.
    Today Spain is a democracy. Yet only very recently in Spain has anyone discussed Lorca's death or the death of Franco's victims in the opening days of the civil war. "Both main political parties want to keep all of the 1930's history off the political agenda," one young Spaniard told me a few years ago. This may change now that the Spanish political landscape has been swept by new left wing and centist political parties.
     Yet whatever the future of Spain is, Lorca's life alas was a short one. His poetry
 and his plays made him a target for right wing forces. His art could not save him. It determined his death.