Madrid, 18.8. This Thursday, representatives of Spanish politics and art paid tribute to the poet and playwright Federico García Lorca on the 86th anniversary of his assassination at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939).
The President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, has shared on his social networks a video in which children’s voices recite Lorca’s poem “Balada de la placeta”, accompanied by the message: “They wanted to silence the poet, erase him from history and became a symbol of freedom; an eternal writer, still present with his verses and works, with his unique and sensitive perspective on life”.
The Ministry of Presidency, Relations with the Courts and Democratic Memory also commemorated García Lorca with the same video, highlighting that “86 years later, Federico lives in the voices of millions of people who continue to enjoy his work. Why not there is hatred that can prevent their words from flying free”.
Other positions in the Spanish government, such as Vice President Yolanda Díaz, shared the poet’s verses with messages such as “Lorca’s voice will never die because beauty and justice pass through her” or that of the Minister for Equality, Irene Montero, who stressed that ” he was murdered by the putschists. Because he’s a fag and he’s red.”
Organizations such as Amnesty International also paid tribute to the Spanish poet, who took the opportunity to defend the figure of Lorca within LGTB iconography and highlight the importance of collective rights.
Personalities from the world of Spanish culture participated in this online tribute. Among them the writer and director of the Cervantes Institute, Luis García Montero, who highlighted the verses: “I want to sleep a while, a minute, a century, but let everyone know that I have not died.”
Lorca, poet and playwright of the so-called Generation 27, was born in Fuente Vaqueros (Granada, south) on June 5, 1898 and shot by the Franco side on the road between the towns of Viznar and Alfacar, possibly in the early morning of the 18th century August 1936.
He is unanimously considered the greatest contemporary Spanish poet. Also due to his tremendous ability to capture images full of beauty, he was the most vehement of his life and the main promoter of neo-populism or folklore in Spanish literature, especially in verse and song.
The search for his remains has been controversial for years, as his family has repeatedly opposed it because they don’t want the exhumation to become a media spectacle.
The last attempt to find her was in 2017, when a team of researchers believed they had found the tomb where the poet’s remains would have lain along with three other people shot in the Civil War. However, no signs of this were found. EFE
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