GLR November-December 2024

what he called “the fairies of all nations.” He clashed with the effeminacy of the “fairies,” who were the most visible sym bol of New York’s gay community at that time. These men challenged the sexual and gender protocols of mainstream so ciety with a flamboyance that they pre sented as upper-class sophistication. For Lorca, having come from Spain, where the only type of homosexual known was the sissy, their behavior was unaccept able. In Ode to Walt Whitman (1929), he embraced what the queer poet described as “camaraderie love, manly friendships, fond, loving, pure, sweet, strong and life long” as his own sexual manifesto. Just when he was due to return to Spain, Lorca accepted an invitation to give a lecture series in Cuba, where he was received like a movie star. In the

Be that as it may, Lorca went to Granada, where he was arrested on Au gust 16, 1936, by a politician who said that “Lorca did more damage with his pen than others with the gun.” He was tor tured while he was in jail and then exe cuted. One of the executors went to a bar afterwards and announced out loud: “We just killed Federico Garcia Lorca. I fired two bullets into his ass for being a queer and left him in a ditch.” Lorca’s remains haven’t been found. His death at age 38 became an instant symbol of everything the Spanish right-wing regime was trying to repress. Dalí and Lorca met briefly at the opening of Lorca’s Doña Rosita the Spin ster in 1935. They told a journalist: “We haven’t seen each other in seven years but it seems like we never stopped talk

Lorca and Dalí in Cadaqués, 1925.

ing.” When Lorca died months later, Dalí was tormented by guilt, regret, and the fantasy that he could have saved him. This is when Lorca became an obsessive motif in many of Dalí’s paintings. He later reminisced: “Lorca was the greatest friend ship of my life and my most fundamental experience. He felt an intense physical love for me, not platonic. I would have liked to reciprocate it but I was unable to. It was a tragic love due to the fact that we could not share it.” Singer/Songwriter D.C. Anderson

streets of Havana, embraced by a joyful and accepting culture, a language he understood, and music he adored, Lorca found sanctuary. The three months he spent in Cuba (March to June 1930) gave him a new lease on life. He took charge of his own destiny, living out his sexuality freely and starting to laugh again. He famously remarked: “If I get lost, let them look for me in Andalusia or Cuba.” Buoyed by his newfound freedom, Lorca delved into his most audacious play yet, El público, which he described as “frankly homosexual,” probably the first time he used that word openly. The focal relationship, a romance between an older and a younger man, allowed Lorca to explore daring themes such as gender tran sitioning, the entrapment of homosexuals, and homophobia in general. The protagonist, Lorca’s alter ego, envisions a future in which love between two men will be accepted. As Lorca pre dicted, the play would not be seen on a stage for decades. When it finally opened in Madrid in 1987, it became a sensation. Back in Spain, Lorca fell in love with Rafael Rodríguez Rapún, who worked in his theater group La Barraca. Following a usual pattern, Rapun, a womanizer, was seduced by Lorca’s personality but didn’t reciprocate the poet’s passion, causing him tremendous grief. He wrote some of his daring and explicitly gay poems for Sonnets of Dark Love (1935) in Valencia while wait ing hopelessly for Rapun. It took decades of public pressure for Lorca’s family to finally allow their publication. The Spanish newspaper that got the scoop in 1984 caved to Federico’s brother Francisco, who demanded that they be published under the title “ Sonnets ” or “ Sonnets of Love ” but under no circumstances with its original title, “ Sonnets of Dark Love ,” even though there was no doubt that they were written for a man. In the shadow of impending political upheaval, as Franco’s right-wing regime led a military uprising in July 1936, Lorca decided to leave Madrid to seek refuge in Granada, a decision that proved fatal. The actress Margarita Xirgu had invited Lorca to go to Mexico with her, but Lorca declined. According to some sources, Lorca did so because Rapun wasn’t able to join him. Others claim that Lorca wanted to be in Granada to be with his new lover, Juan Ramírez de Lucas, whose father denied him permission to travel abroad with the poet.

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