1898

Federico García Lorca was born on 5 JUNE in Fuente Vaqueros, a village in the Vega (flood plain of the river Genil) to the west of the city of Granada.

1900-1909

His brother, Luis, was born in 1900 but died of pneumonia in 1902, the year when Lorca’s brother Francisco was born. His sister, María de la Concepción (known as Concha), was born in 1903. Between the end of 1906 and early 1907 the family moved to the neighbouring village of Asquerosa (now Valderrubio). Lorca started primary school. From 1908 to 1909 he lived in Almería with his former teacher Antonio Rodríguez Espinosa, where he began secondary studies, although he returned to his family before the end of the school year because of illness. 1910

1910

His sister, Isabel, was born. 1909-1914: Lorca resumed his secondary studies at the Sagrado Corazón de Jesús school in Granada. He studied music with Antonio Segura. His family spent their summers in Malaga, where Lorca met Emilio Prados and Manuel Altolaguirre. He also became friends with the painter Manuel Ángeles Ortiz.

1915

Lorca began to study law and humanities at the University of Granada. His tutors included Martín Domínguez Berrueta (theory of literature and the arts) and Fernando de los Ríos (comparative political law). Fernando de los Ríos would later become a minister during Spain’s Second Republic, and his daughter Laura married Francisco, Lorca’s brother, in 1942, during the years of exile in New York. Lorca joined the literary circle known as the “Rinconcillo” at the Café Alameda in Granada. The group’s other members included José Mora Guarnido, Constantino Ruiz Carnero, Francisco Soriano, Melchor Fernández Almagro, Antonio Gallego Burín, Miguel Pizarro, José and Manuel Fernández Montesinos, Hermenegildo Lanz, Ángel Barrios, and Ismael González de la Serna. At these gatherings the group invented a fictitious poet, Isidoro Capdepón Fernández, whose supposed texts have been attributed to Lorca. Lorca’s first drawings also date from this period.

1916

Lorca wrote the autobiographical prose piece Mi pueblo (My Village). His music professor, Antonio Segura, died and Lorca abandoned his musical studies. In June, on a school trip led by Martín Domínguez Berrueta, he went to Baeza (where he met Antonio Machado), Úbeda, Córdoba and Ronda. The García Lorca family moved to No. 34 on Granada’s central Gran Vía. From 15 October to 8 November, a second school trip with Domínguez Berrueta took Lorca to El Escorial, Ávila, Medina del Campo, Salamanca (where he met Miguel de Unamuno), Santiago de Compostela, La Coruña, Lugo, León, Burgos, Segovia and Madrid. In some of these cities Lorca gave public piano recitals.

1917

Another family move, this time to No. 31 Acera del Casino in Granada, near the river Genil. For the centennial celebrations of Zorrilla, Lorca published the prose piece Fantasía simbólica (Symbolic Fantasy) in the Boletín del Centro Artístico y Literario de Granada. In JUNE he travelled to Baeza once again with Domínguez Berrueta. On 29 June he wrote his first poem, Canción (Ensueño y confusión) (Song: Daydream and Confusion). Another school trip to Madrid, Burgos and Palencia. He reported on these travels in various pieces of writing, some of which were published that summer in the Diario de Burgos. They would later form the basis of a book, Impresiones y paisajes (Impressions and Landscapes). He fell in love with María Luisa Egea.

1918

In MARCH a reading of Impressions and Landscapes at the Granada Art and Literature Centre, one month before its publication in book form. Many poems from his future Libro de poemas (Book of Poems) can be traced to this period. Friendship and correspondence with Adriano del Valle. Together with Ángel Barrios, Miguel Pizarro and Manuel Ángeles Ortiz, Lorca staged a play that they titled La historia del Tesoro (The History of the Treasure). A lifelong friendship with Emilia Llanos developed. His first poem was published in the magazine Renovación, although no copies have survived.

1925
In JANUARY Lorca put the finishing touches to Mariana Pineda, while also beginning correspondence with Jorge Guillén. In APRIL he spent a few days at Dalí’s family home in Cadaqués on the Costa Brava, where he gave a reading of Mariana Pineda; shortly thereafter, at the notary’s office of Dali’s father, in Figueras, he gave another reading in front of numerous guests. The Ateneo in Figueras organised a special meal in his honour, after which he gave a poetry reading. orca spent several days with Dalí in Barcelona, and at the city’s Ateneo he read Mariana Pineda to a selected audience, as well as some of the poems from Gypsy Ballads. He spent MAY in Madrid and JUNE in Granada. The family bought the Huerta de San Vicente, a property just outside Granada, where Lorca would spend much of his time. In between correspondence with Salvador and Ana María Dalí, he began to write Oda a Salvador Dalí (Ode to Salvador Dalí). He read The Shoemaker’s Prodigious Wife to his friends Miguel Cerón and Fernando Vílchez, and began to write Amor de don Perlimplín con Belisa en su jardín(The Love of Don Perlimplín for Belisa in His Garden). Towards the end of the year, back in Madrid, he met the sculptor Emilio Aladrén, who would be his lover until 1929.

1926
JANUARY and February were taken up with travels to and through the Alpujarra area in the company of Manuel de Falla, Alfonso García Valdecasas, Antonio Luna, Manuel Torres López and José Segura. He finished a version of The Love of Don Perlimplín. Also in FEBRUARY he gave the lecture La imagen poética de don Luis de Góngora (The Poetic Image of Luis de Góngora) at the Ateneo in Granada. In MARCH he returned to the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid. In APRIL his Ode to Salvador Dalíwas published in the prestigious Revista de Occidente. A poetry reading at the Ateneo in Valladolid. Jean Cassou reviewed the Ode in Mercure de France. Lorca spent the summer between Asquerosa, the Huerta de San Vicente and the Alpujarra spa town of Lanjarón. Keen to achieve financial independence from his family, he considered studying to obtain tenure to teach literature at the university. In OCTOBER he gave the lecture Paraíso cerrado para muchos, jardines abiertos para pocos (A Paradise Closed to Many, Gardens Open to Few), on Soto de Rojas, at the Ateneo in Granada. He began correspondence with Guillermo de Torre and Gerardo Diego.. The journal Litoral, edited in Malaga by Emilio Prados and Manuel Altolaguirre, published poems from Gypsy Ballads. He gave a copy of his play Mariana Pineda to the actress Margarita Xirgu.

1927
Lorca made preparations with a group of friends from Granada to launch a literary magazine called Gallo (Cockerel) the following year. In FEBRUARY Margarita Xirgu said she wanted to stage Mariana Pinedathat summer in Barcelona; Lorca put Salvador Dalí in charge of designing the sets. In March he read the play for the actress. Further poems were published in APRIL in Verso y Prosa, a journal printed in Murcia under the direction of Juan Guerrero Ruiz, while Litoral in Malaga published his Songs(1921–1924). Correspondence with Rafael Martínez Nadal. The period from MAY to AUGUST was spent in Catalonia, preparing for the opening of Mariana Pineda. While in Barcelona he met Sebastiá Gasch, Lluis Montanyà and other writers associated with the literary magazine L’Amic de les Arts, which published his ballad Reyerta de gitanos (Gypsy Feud), illustrated with a drawing by Dalí. He went to Sitges with Dalí and Gasch before spending a few days in Cadaqués. Mariana Pineda opened in JUNE at the Teatro Goya in Barcelona. In June and July some of his drawings were exhibited at the Dalmau Galleries in Barcelona; meanwhile, Dalí dedicated his prose piece “San Sebastián” (published in L’Amic de les Arts) to Lorca. In early August Lorca went back to the Huerta de San Vicente, and after a short stay in Lanjarón, he settled in Granada. His poems from this period had a surrealist air. He continued to correspond with Sebastià Gasch. In OCTOBER Margarita Xirgu’s theatre company performed Mariana Pineda at the Teatro Fontalba in Madrid. Lorca met Vicente Aleixandre. La Gaceta Literaria, edited by Ernesto Giménez Caballero, organised a banquet in Lorca’s honour at the Villa Rosa. In NOVEMBER the prose piece Santa Lucía y San Lázaro (St Lucy and St Lazarus) was published in Revista de Occidente. DECEMBER included a presentation on Góngora at the Residencia de Estudiantes and a tribute to the same poet at the Ateneo in Seville, where Lorca was joined by Dámaso Alonso, Gerardo Diego, Jorge Guillén, José Bergamín, Rafael Alberti and Juan Chabás, as well as the bullfighter Ignacio Sánchez Mejías (who paid for the trip). While in Seville, Lorca met Luis Cernuda, Fernando Villalón and Joaquín Romero Murube.

1928
The first months of the year were spent in Granada. Lorca planned to publish a book of drawings, with a prologue by Gasch and an epilogue by Dalí. He took a short trip to Guadix, in eastern Granada province, with Manuel de Falla. His attention was focused on the Ode to the Holy Sacrament of the Altar (Ode to the Holy Sacrament of the Altar) and Oda a Sesostris (Ode to Sesostris), and he also completed The Shoemaker’s Prodigious Wife. The first issue of Gallo came out in MARCH; it was followed, in a humorous vein, by Pavo (Turkey), a magazine created by the same hands and minds as Gallo. Lorca became acquainted with an American journalist, Mildred Adams. APRIL was spent in Madrid. The second and final issue of Gallo was published in MAY. In JULY he gave his lecture A Paradise Closed to Many… in Zamora. Revista de Occidente published his Gypsy Ballads over several issues. The newspapers printed articles about a striking crime of passion that had taken place in Níjar: the event that would inspire Bodas de sangre (Blood Wedding). AUGUST was marked by correspondence with Jorge Zalamea, from Columbia. In SEPTEMBER Mariana Pineda was published by La Farsa, while the journal L’Amic de les Arts featured his more surrealist prose. In OCTOBER, at the Ateneo in Granada, Lorca read a paper titled Imaginación, inspiración, evasión, which would later be retitled La mecánica de la poesía (The Mechanics of Poetry) and, a few days later, another piece, Sketch de la nueva pintura (Sketch of the New Painting). Revista de Occidente published Ode to the Holy Sacrament of the Altar, dedicated to Falla. In DECEMBER he gave the lecture El patetismo de la canción de cuna española (Pathos in the Spanish Lullaby) at the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid, and an interview to Ernesto Giménez Caballero for La Gaceta Literaria.

1929
After the break-up of his relationship with Emilio Aladrén, Lorca decided to travel to New York. In JANUARY La Gaceta Literaria published Degollación de los inocentes (Beheading of the Innocents), illustrated by Dalí. In FEBRUARY the first performance of The Love of Don Perlimplín for Belisa in His Garden (by the experimental theatre group Caracol) was called off because of the death of Spanish queen mother. Other ventures continued: the lecture Imaginación, inspiración, evasión at the Lyceum Club in Madrid, the second edition of Songs, and his longstanding friendship with Carlos Morla Lynch, a Chilean diplomat stationed in Madrid, and his wife, Bebé Vicuña. In APRIL Lorca read Ode to Salvador Dalí and Romance de Thamar y Amnón (Ballad of Thamar and Amnon) at the Cineclub. The Ateneo in Bilbao called for a repeat of Imaginación, inspiración, evasión, and Lorca also gave a poetry reading at the Cineclub in that city. The poet went to Granada to attend the opening of Mariana Pineda by Margarita Xirgu’s company at the Teatro Cervantes. In MAY a banquet was held in honour of the playwright and the actress at the Hotel Alhambra Palace and, a few days later, Lorca gave a poetry reading at the same hotel. The village of Fuente Vaqueros paid tribute to its native son. In JUNE, shortly before Lorca left for New York, La Gaceta Literaria honoured him with a farewell banquet. The poet spent a few days in Granada before returning to Madrid.

1929
Accompanied by Fernando de los Ríos, Lorca headed for New York, via Paris and London. In Paris they visited Mathilde Pomès and then stopped to see Salvador de Madariaga in London. On 19 JUNE they boarded the Olympic in Southhampton, arriving in New York a week later, where they were met by Ángel del Río, Gabriel García Maroto, León Felipe and José Camprubí. Lorca took a room in Furnald Hall at Columbia University and enrolled for an English-language course. He re-encountered Philip Cummings and Campbell Hackforth-Jones, having first met them at the Residencia de Estudiantes, and Mildred Adams, whom he already knew from Granada. León Felipe published a review of Gypsy Ballads in the Revista de Estudios Hispánicos. In AUGUST Lorca wrote El rey de Harlem (The King of Harlem) and 1910 (Intermedio), two of the first poems written for what was to become Poet in New York. The journal Alhambra, edited by Ángel Flores in New York, published two ballads translated into English and several photographs by Lorca. He made friends with Henry Herschel Brickell, the literary critic of The New York Herald. He went to Eden Mills, Vermont, to spend a few days at the home of Philip Cummings. Towards the end of AUGUST he spent some time at the summer home of Ángel del Río in Bushnellsville, in the Catskills. He also visited Federico de Onís in Newburgh. On 20 SEPTEMBER he was back in New York, now staying in John Jay Hall at Columbia. He wrote the film script Viaje a la luna (Trip to the Moon), which he planned to produce in collaboration with Emilio Armero from Mexico. He wrote the poem Infancia y muerte (Childhood and Death). Friendship with John Crow and Francis C. Hayes, and acquaintance with the poet Hart Crane. In OCTOBER the Wall Street crash occurred. In DECEMBER his sister Concha married Manuel Fernández Montesinos in Granada.

1930
In JANUARY Lorca left John Jay Hall to share a flat with a friend from the Residencia de Estudiantes, José Antonio Rubio Sacristán, who had just arrived in New York. At Vassar College he gave the lecture Pathos in the Spanish Lullaby. He gave a speech in honour of La Argentina, who had just made her New York debut, celebrated with a banquet at the Cosmopolitan Club. In FEBRUARY the bullfighter Ignacio Sánchez Mejías and La Argentinita arrived. Lorca introduced a talk about bullfighting given by Sánchez Mejías at the Instituto de las Españas. He worked with La Argentinita on harmonising popular Spanish songs. He was invited by the Hispano–Cuban Cultural Institution to give a series of talks about Havana and other Cuban cities. The Instituto de las Españas paid tribute to him, and he gave his lecture The Mechanics of Poetry. After travelling by train to Tampa, Florida, he took the steamboat Cuba to Havana, where he arrived on 6 MARCH and was met by his old friend José María Chacón y Calvo, the Cuban poet Juan Marinello and the journalist Rafael Suárez Solís. He got to know Antonio Quevedo and María Muñoz, a couple who were friends of Manuel de Falla. From MARCH to APRIL he gave a series of lectures at the Teatro Principal de la Comedia in Havana: The Mechanics of Poetry; A Paradise Closed to Many, Gardens Open to Few; Pathos in the Spanish Lullaby; The Poetic Image of Luis de Góngora; and La arquitectura del cante jondo (the Architecture of Cante Jondo). He worked on the play El público (The Public). Friendship with the Loynaz family, whose house he visited nearly every day, and for whom he read The Public. In the company of the writer Lydia Cabrera, an acquaintance from Madrid, he attended a ñáñiga ceremony. Conferences in Caibarién, presented by José María Chacón y Calvo, and in Cienfuegos and Santiago de Cuba. A reception in his honor in Santiago de las Vegas. He wrote Son de negros en Cuba (Son of Blacks in Cuba) and Oda a Walt Whitman (Ode to Walt Whitman) for inclusion in Poet in New York. In MAY his friends García Maroto and Adolfo Salazar arrived in Havana. Friendship with the Guatemalan writer Luis Cardoza Aragón. Lorca met Nicolás Guillén and José Lezama Lima. He was admitted to a clinic to have some warts removed. In JUNE a farewell dinner was held in Lorca’s honour at the Hotel Bristol, organised by Revista de Avance. On 12 June he boarded the Manuel Arnús which, after stopping in New York, sailed on to Cadiz, where it docked on 30 June.

1930
On his return from the United States and Cuba, Lorca was met on the Cadiz quayside by his siblings Isabel and Francisco. Back in Granada, he completed The Public. In SEPTEMBER he spent a few days in Málaga, where Emilio Prados introduced him to the young poet José Luis Cano. In OCTOBER, in Madrid, he was interviewed by Miguel Pérez Ferrero for the newspaper Heraldo de Madrid. In DECEMBER he gave his lecture The Architecture of Cante Jondo in San Sebastián and Gijón. The theatre company Caracol, led by the actress Margarita Xirgu, opened The Shoemaker’s Prodigious Wife at the Teatro Español in Madrid. A reading of The Public at the home of Morla Lynch. The Christmas holidays were spent in Granada with his family.

1931
In JANUARY Revista de Occidente published poems from Poet in en Nueva York. In MARCH Lorca became friends with the Argentinian actress Lola Membrives. The record label La Voz de su Amo (the Spanish affiliate of His Master’s Voice) released a set of five albums under the title Canciones populares antiguas, sung by La Argentinita, with harmonies and piano accompaniment by Lorca. In APRIL the French Hispanist Mathilde Pomès visited Lorca in Madrid. Municipal elections were held, followed by the proclamation of the Second Republic. In JUNE the Poem of Cante Jondo was published by Ulises. In AUGUST, back at the Huerta de San Vicente, he finished the play Así que pasen cinco años (When Five Years Pass). In NOVEMBER Luis Cernuda wrote an article about Lorca for the newspaper Heraldo de Madrid. Lorca began to write El Diván del Tamarit (Diwan of the Tamarit). The travelling theatre group La Barraca was founded under the patronage of the new Republican government; Lorca was to be its artistic director, Eduardo Ugarte became his assistant director and Arturo Sáenz de la Calzada was appointed to chair the management committee.

1932
He became friends with Eduardo Rodríguez Valdivieso in FEBRUARY. Between MARCH and MAY Lorca was very busy, giving lectures at the request of the Committees of Intellectual Cooperation, an independent organisation. He gave his talk about cante jondo in Valladolid, Seville, Vigo, La Coruña and Salamanca, and on his New York poems in Santiago de Compostela, where he also made friends with Carlos Martínez-Barbeito. In Salamanca he visited Unamuno in the company of Carlos Morla Lynch and Rafael Martínez Nadal. His New York lecture/reading also took him to the Residencia de Señoritas in Madrid and to San Sebastián. He wrote several poems in the Galician language. In JUNE he took part in a posthumous tribute to the painter María Blanchard at the Ateneo in Madrid. Several of his poems were published in the journal Héroe, recently launched by Manuel Altolaguirre and Concha Méndez. Eight of his drawings were exhibited in a group show at in the Ateneo Popular in Huelva. In JULY La Barraca prepared its first tour. Previously, they gave a preview of the Calderón de la Barca’s play La vida es sueño (Life Is a Dream) at the Residencia de Señoritas of Madrid. La Barraca’s first tour took in Burgo de Osma, San Leonardo, Vinuesa, Soria, and Almazán. Back in Madrid, they performed at the Residencia de Estudiantes. Lorca spent part of AUGUST at the Huerta de San Vicente, where he completed Blood Wedding. In late August La Barraca set out on its second tour, to La Coruña, Santiago de Compostela, Vigo, Pontevedra, Villagarcía de Arosa, Ribadeo, Grado, Avilés, Oviedo and Cangas de Onís. In SEPTEMBER, back in Madrid, he read Blood Wedding at the homes of Morla Lynch and of Rafael Martínez Nadal. In OCTOBER La Barraca appeared at the Teatro Isabel la Católica in Granada and at the Central University of Madrid. At the end of the month Josefina Díaz de Artigas’s theatre company began rehearsals for Blood Wedding. Lorca’s parents moved to Madrid, first living at no. 8 Calle General Arrando, and later at No. 102 Calle Alcalá (now No. 96). In NOVEMBER Lorca gave a reading in Pontevedra and a talk about María Blanchard in Lugo. In DECEMBER his talk about New York at the Hotel Ritz in Barcelona was attended by his friends Sebastià Gasch and J. V. Foix. La Barraca performed Life Is a Dream at the Teatro Español in Madrid, after which the company travelled to Murcia and Alicante, where Lorca met the poet Miguel Hernández.

1933
The year began with a stay at Gregorio Marañón’s country home in Toledo. MARCH saw the opening performance of Blood Wedding by Josefina Díaz de Artigas’s company at the Teatro Beatriz of Madrid, with sets designed and decorated by Santiago Ontañón and Manuel Fontanals. In APRIL the Anfistora theatre club, directed by Pura Ucelay, opened at the Teatro Español of Madrid with The Love of Don Perlimplín for Belisa in His Garden and a new version of The Shoemaker’s Prodigious Wife. A friendship with the Galician writer Eduardo Blanco-Amor developed. Lorca and La Barraca travelled to Valladolid, Zamora and Salamanca; and in San Sebastián he gave a reading of his Elegy to María Blanchard. In MAY he was one of the many signatories to a manifesto against the rise of Hitler. Rafael Alberti gave a lecture at the Teatro Español, with song and dance by La Argentinita, accompanied on the piano by Lorca. He began an affair with Rafael Rodríguez Rapún, who became La Barraca’s secretary. Premiere of Blood Wedding in Barcelona. La Barraca performed Fuenteovejuna in Valencia, with sets and costumes by Alberto Sánchez. In JUNE Lorca went to Cadiz to attend the opening of Falla’s El amor brujo (Love, the Magician) starring La Argentinita, who went on to repeat the performance at the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid. Plans to open When Five Years Pass at the Anfistora theatre club began to take shape. In JULY Bodas de sangre with Lola Membrives and company, was a huge success in Buenos Aires; Juan Reforzo, Lola Membrives’s husband and manager, invited Lorca to the city. La Barraca went out on tour again in AUGUST to León, Mieres, Santander, Pamplona, Huesca, Tudela, Estella, Logroño and Burgos. Ode to Walt Whitman was first published in Mexico, later to be included in Poet in New York.

1933
On 29 SEPTEMBER set sail from Barcelona to Buenos Aires on the Conte Grande. On board with him was the stage manager Manuel Fontanals. After ports of call in Las Palmas (Canary Islands), Río de Janeiro and Montevideo, they arrived in Buenos Aires on 13 October. En route, however, Lorca was able to work on Yerma and on his lecture Juego y teoría del duende (Play and Theory of the Duende). The two friends stayed at the Hotel Castelar on the Avenida de Mayo, and the local press took great interest in Lorca’s visit. He enthusiastically joined in the city’s social scene, making friends with many writers and artists, including Oliverio Girondo, Pablo Neruda, Ricardo Molinari, Victoria Ocampo, Jorge Larco, Norah Lange, Amado Villar and Salvador Novo. Talks and readings: Play and Theory of the Duende, Cómo canta una ciudad de noviembre a noviembre (How a City Sings From November to November), A Poet in New York and Cante Jondo: Primitive Andalusian Song. Another production of Blood Wedding was performed by Lola Membrives’s company at the Teatro Avenida, this time with sets by Jorge Larco. In NOVEMBER gave a joint lecture with Pablo Neruda on Rubén Darío. Victoria Ocampo published a new edition of Gypsy Ballads. Lola Membrives took the new version of The Shoemaker’s Prodigious Wife to the Teatro Avenida. In DECEMBER Lorca travelled to the Argentinian city of Rosario, where he read Play and Theory of the Duende.

1934
n JANUARY Lola Membrives’s company premiered Mariana Pineda at the Teatro Avenida in Buenos Aires, although Lorca spent most of the month and FEBRUARY that year in Montevideo, where he made frequent visits to see Enrique Díez-Canedo, then the Spanish Ambassador to Uruguay, and Enrique Amorim, José Mora Guarnido (his old friend from Granada) and the writer Juana de Ibarbourou. While staying at the Hotel Carrasco, he was very active socially, lecturing and giving press interviews. Before returning to Buenos Aires he visited the grave of his friend the painter Rafael Pérez Barradas. In MARCH Lorca’s adaptation of Lope de Vega’s La dama boba [La dama boba](A Lady of Little Sense) opened at the Teatro de la Comedia in Buenos Aires, starring Eva Franco. A puppet show was performed in the Teatro Avenida foyer, where Retablillo de don Cristóbal (Don Cristóbal’s Puppet Show) made its debut. Lorca bade farewell to Buenos Aires via the microphones of Radio Stentor, and on 27 March he left Argentina aboard the Conte Biancamano, which arrived in Barcelona on 11 APRIL. Once again in Madrid, celebrations were organised in his honour by La Barraca and, a few days later, by the Spanish University Federation at the Hotel Florida, where Don Cristóbal’s Puppet Show was staged. Spring found Lorca at the Huerta de San Vicente, where Eduardo Blanco-Amor paid him a visit. After a short stay in Madrid, he returned to Granada for his name day on 18 JULY. He then completed Yerma and Diwan of the Tamarit. On 11 AUGUST Ignacio Sánchez Mejías was gored to death at Manzanares bullring. Lorca travelled with La Barraca to Santander and Palencia, where Miguel de Unamuno attended the performance of the early-seventeenth-century play El burlador de Sevilla (The Trickster of Seville). In SEPTEMBER close friends from Granada — including Antonio Gallego Burín, Constantino Ruiz Carnero, Manuel Fernández Montesinos, Luis Rosales and Lorca’s brother Francisco — held a dinner in his honor at El Último Ventorrillo, just outside the city; also present was Emilio García Gómez, the Arabist who would later write the prologue for Diwan of the Tamarit in an edition that was prepared by the University of Granada but never went to press, because of the civil war. A reading of his poem Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías in early NOVEMBER at the home of Morla Lynch in Madrid. He began writing Doña Rosita la soltera o El lenguaje de las flores (Doña Rosita the Spinster, or The Language of Flowers). Margarita Xirgu’s company opened Yerma (with stage design by Manuel Fontanals) at the Teatro Español in Madrid. In DECEMBER Lorca was interviewed in Madrid by Alardo Prats for El Sol. He was still a regular participant at literary gatherings in Madrid, such as those at La Ballena Alegre, the basement of the Café Lyon, the Correos bar on Calle Alcalá and the Chiki-Kutz and Gijón pavement cafés on the Paseo de Recoletos. He met up with Pablo Neruda once again.

1935
JANUARY saw Lorca collaborating on a production by the Anfistora Club of Lope de Vega’s Peribáñez y el comendador de Ocaña at the Capitol theatre in Madrid, as well as working on a new production of Don Cristóbal’s Puppet Show at the Lyceum women’s club. In FEBRUARY he was interviewed in Madrid for La Voz by Ángel Lázaro (“Proel”). The Neighborhood Playhouse of New York, meanwhile, opened Blood Wedding, which also premiered at the Coliseum in Madrid, produced by Lola Membrives, while a repeat performance was also given of The Shoemaker’s Prodigious Wife. Lorca spent Easter Week in Seville as the guest of Joaquín Romero Murube. There he saw José Bello, Jorge Guillén and José Antonio Rubio Sacristán. Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías was published in Cruz y Raya under the auspices of José Bergamín. After completing Doña Rosita the Spinster, or The Language of Flowers, in JUNE, Lorca was again visited at the Huerta de San Vicente by Eduardo Blanco-Amor, an encounter that was recorded in a set of photographs. In AUGUST, during La Barraca’s summer residency at the University of Santander, Lorca was interviewed by the Italian literary critic Silvio d’Amico. From SEPTEMBER until DECEMBER he stayed in Barcelona, revisiting Salvador Dalí. Yerma opened in Barcelona to enthusiastic acclaim. He read Doña Rosita the Spinster for Margarita Xirgu. He attended the Valencia performance of Yerma, where he wrote several sonnets, later to be known as Sonetos del amor oscuro (Sonnets of Dark Love). He met the young poet Juan Gil-Albert, and was interviewed by Jordi Jou for the Barcelona journal La Humanitat. The Palacio Principal Palace in Barcelona staged Blood Wedding and Doña Rosita the Spinster. He gave a public reading of the poems from Diwan of the Tamarit and the lecture How a City Sings from November to November. He took part in a posthumous tribute to Isaac Albéniz. A special version of Doña Rosita the Spinster was performed for the florists of Las Ramblas in Barcelona. A vast crowd attended a dinner in his honour at the city’s Hotel Majestic. Owing to the demands on his time, Lorca gave up directing La Barraca. In Santiago de Compostela, on the initiative of Eduardo Blanco-Amor, Seis poemas galegos was published by Nos.

1936
JANUARY began with a meeting in Madrid with the Argentinian journalist Pablo Suero. The first edition of Bodas de sangre was published by Ediciones del Árbol, while Primeras canciones (First Songs) appeared in Héroe, the journal run by Manuel Altolaguirre and Concha Méndez. Lorca took part in the tribute to Rafael Alberti and María Teresa León. A poetry reading for El Sitio in Bilbao was accompanied by Margarita Xirgu, who in FEBRUARY would take Yerma for its premiere in Havana. vents were held in honour of Luis Cernuda and Hernando Viñes, while plans to produce the puppet show Los títeres de cachiporra, with musical illustrations by Federico Elizalde, would be frustrated. In MARCH he made a short trip to San Sebastián, where he read poems from Gypsy Ballads at the Ateneo. ABRIL Lee en los micrófonos de Unión Radio la alocución sobre la Semana Santa granadina. In APRIL he gave a talk for Unión Radio about the Holy Week traditions in Granada. Felipe Morales interviewed him for La Voz in Madrid. He planned a trip to Mexico, where Margarita Xirgu had just premiered Yerma. vents were held in honour of Luis Cernuda and Hernando Viñes, while plans to produce the puppet show Los títeres de cachiporra, with musical illustrations by Federico Elizalde, would be frustrated. Events were held in honour of Luis Cernuda and Hernando Viñes, while plans to produce the puppet show Los títeres de cachiporra, with musical illustrations by Federico Elizalde, would be frustrated. In San Sebastián Lorca saw the poet Gabriel Celaya, whom he had met at the Residencia de Estudiantes, and the architect José Manuel Aizpurúa. In MAY he participated in the tribute to the French writers André Malraux, Jean Cassou and Henri Lenor, organised by the Popular Front. In JUNE, together with Alberti, Cernuda, Altolaguirre, Aleixandre, Neruda and Serrano Plaja, Lorca took part in an outdoor poetry reading on the Paseo de Recoletos of Madrid. Having finished The House of Bernarda Alba, he began work on the first act of Los sueños de mi prima Aurelia (The Dreams of My Cousin Aurelia). In JULY Lorca signed a manifesto against the Portuguese dictator Salazar. These were the final days he would spend in Madrid, and included an interview with Luis Bagaría for El Sol. On the 11th, he had dinner with Pablo Neruda at the Chilean port’s home. On the 12th, he read The House of Bernarda Alba at the home of Dr Eusebio Oliver, where Jorge Guillén, Dámaso Alonso, Pedro Salinas and Guillermo de Torre were also present. On the 13th, he called in at the offices of Cruz y Raya, where he had hoped to find José Bergamín but had to leave a note and the manuscript of Poet in Nueva York on his desk. (This is the manuscript that would be used to prepare the first editions of the book after Lorca’s death). He spent the rest of day with Rafael Martínez Nadal, who accompanied him to Atocha station, where he took the train to Granada. Lorca’s final days: on 14 July he settled in at the Huerta de San Vicente, where he was paid a visit by Eduardo Rodríguez Valdivieso. On 18 July Franco led his military coup against the Republican government. Lorca’s brother-in-law, Manuel Fernández Montesinos, the socialist mayor of Granada, was arrested on 20 July. From 6 to 9 AUGUST, falangist groups carried out several searches at the García Lorca home. On 11 August Lorca took refuge at the Rosales family home, as some of its members were well-known falangists in Granada. Nevertheless, on 16 August Lorca was arrested and taken to the Civil Government building in the city. That same day, Manuel Fernández Montesinos was murdered. Petitions and pleas in Lorca’s favour by Manuel de Falla and Luis Rosales had no effect. He was taken to the nearby village of Víznar, where he was shot and killed on 19 August.