Federico Garcia Lorca

Federico Garcia Lorca, who lived from 1898 to 1936, was a Spanish poet, playwright and theatre director and a key member of the Generation of '27, the literary movement that brought European avant-garde styles into Spanish letters. He first gained fame with the poetry collection Romancero gitano, or Gypsy Ballads (1928), and after returning from a stay in New York he wrote his most celebrated plays, the Rural Trilogy of Blood Wedding (1932), Yerma (1934) and The House of Bernarda Alba (1936), works that challenged social convention and explored taboo subjects including homoeroticism and class conflict. Lorca was arrested and executed by Nationalist forces on August 19, 1936, in the opening days of the Spanish Civil War; his remains have never been located, and Franco's regime banned his work until 1953.