Who were Spain's Generation of '27, and who was Lorca?

The Generation of '27 and Lorca

La Generación del 27 y Federico García Lorca

16 December 1927–August 1936. From 16 to 18 December 1927 a group of young poets travelled from Madrid to Seville, invited by the bullfighter and writer Ignacio Sánchez Mejías, to honour…

Where: Spain, The whole Spanish-speaking world, Seville, Madrid, Granada

What happened

From 16 to 18 December 1927 a group of young poets travelled from Madrid to Seville, invited by the bullfighter and writer Ignacio Sánchez Mejías, to honour the tercentenary of Góngora's death at the Ateneo. Lorca, Alberti, Dámaso Alonso, Gerardo Diego, Bergamín and Chabás read, Cernuda hid in the audience, and a newspaper photograph of the first evening became the group's portrait and gave it its name. Lorca was the most loved: Romancero gitano (1928), the travelling theatre La Barraca, Bodas de sangre, Yerma, La casa de Bernarda Alba. Arrested in Granada on 16 August 1936, a month into the Civil War, he was shot by the rebels near Víznar, probably on the 18th. The war scattered the rest into exile or silence.

Say it

Federico García Lorca murió en agosto de 1936, al principio de la Guerra Civil.

Federico García Lorca died in August 1936, at the start of the Civil War.

Why it matters

The '27 poets are the second golden age of Spanish verse, read across the whole Spanish-speaking world; Lorca is the most translated Spanish writer after Cervantes, and his killing is the war's most remembered death.

Read about it

Culture

Connected

Sources

  1. La foto del 27 en los actos del Ateneo — Centro Virtual Cervantes, Rinconete (Margarita Garbisu)
  2. Biografía de Federico García Lorca — Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes