Federico García Lorca, poet and playwright assigned to the Generation of 27, was born in the Granada town of Fuentevaqueros on June 5, 1898 and died dramatically at dawn on August 18, 1936, when he was supposedly shot somewhere on the road. between Víznar and Alfacar (Granada). The mortal remains of one of the most universal Spanish poets of the 20th century have not yet been found. His link with the province of Jaén is due to study trips to different regions of Spain, in the company of a professor and his fellow students.

The study trip to the town of Baeza, where he met Antonio Machado – already a professor of French language at the General and Technical Institute – is crucial for awakening his vocation as a writer, since in his adolescence the young Lorca felt more affinity for music than for writing.

From these visits the texts Impressions of the trip II Baeza: The City, will be born, published in 1917 in the Granada magazine Letras. Texts later reworked in his first book Impressions and landscapes (1918) with the title Lost City, including a dedication to María del Reposo Urquía, daughter of the director of the Institute and one of his first friends outside Granada. An interesting description of Baeza from the beginning of the century that responds to the “impressions” caused by the visit to the city.

These student transfers will not be the only ones that Federico García Lorca made to the province, but in 1925 he visited the city of Jaén several times in the company of some friends.

The stays in the capital were not anecdotal, but they left a transcendental mark both in his turn towards literature to the detriment of music, and in the deepening of his theory of Andalusia.

The severe Andalusia of Jaén is important to Lorca, as evidenced by his frequent references to the landscape of the upper Guadalquivir, the olive trees or the fact that his Romancero Gitano was originally called “Romance of Dark sorrow in Jaén”.

Poem of the Deep Song. Landscape

The fields open

like a fan.

Above the olive grove

there is a sunken sky

and a dark shower

of cold stars.

Bulrush and twilight tremble

at the edge of the river.…)

Jaén is also present in the music of Federico García Lorca. Thus, in 1931 he recorded five gramophone records with Encarnación López “La Argentinita”. Among the engraved pieces The Moorish of Jaén, a popular poem from the 15th century. La Argentinita provided the voice, the tap dance and the castanets and Federico García Lorca accompanied her on the piano.

Literary production of Federico García Lorca

As Federico Chica expresses in Jaén in Federico García Lorca, «if Granada and Seville suppose for the poet the encounter with the Arab culture, Cordoba the affirmation of the Roman element and Malaga, the Mediterranean; Jaén has proven to be transcendental for the literary production of Federico García Lorca, both because of the direction he took promoting his vocation as a writer, and because of the work he developed towards a closed and furious aesthetic ».

Literary work:

POETRY

Book of poems (1921)

Deep Song Poem (1921)

First songs (1922)

Songs (1921-1924)

Gypsy ballads (1924-1927)

Poet in New York (1929-1930)

Cry for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías (1935)

Six Galician Poems (1935)

Divan of Tamarit (1936)

Sonnets of Dark Love (1936)

Loose Poems

Popular Songs

PROSE

(PRINTS)

Symbolic fantasy

Granada. Paradise closed for many

Easter in Granada

(NARRATIONS)

Saint Lucia and Saint Lazarus

History of this rooster

Death of the Baptist

Death of the Innocents

Suicide in Alexandria

Swimmer submerged. (Small tribute to a saloon chronicler)

Lovers killed by a partridge

The hen

FIRST BOOK IN PROSE

Impressions and landscapes. (1918)

CINEMATOGRAPHIC SCRIPT

Trip to the Moon (1929)

THEATER

The Butterfly’s Evil Spell (1919)

The girl who waters the basil and the wondering prince (1923)

The Billy-Club Puppets. Tragicomedy of Don Cristóbal and Sená María (1923)

Mariana Pineda (1925)

Brief Theater (1928): (The walk of Buster keaton), (The maiden, the sailor and the student), (Chimera)

The Shoemaker’s Prodigious Wife (1930)

Love of Don Perlimplín with Belisa in Their garden (1931)

Altar for Don Cristóbal. Farce for guignol (1931)

Once Five Years Pass (1931)

The public (1933)

Blood wedding (1933)

Yerma (1934)

Doña Rosita the Spinster, or the Language of Flowers (1935)

The House of Bernarda Alba (1936)