Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca[a][b] (5 June 1898 – 19 August 1936) was a Spanish poet, playwright, and theatre director.

García Lorca achieved international recognition as an emblematic member of the Generation of '27, a group consisting mostly of poets who introduced the tenets of European movements (such as symbolism, futurism, and surrealism) into Spanish literature.

Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca[5] was born on 5 June 1898, in Fuente Vaqueros, a small town 17 km west of Granada, southern Spain.

[6] His father, Federico García Rodríguez, was a prosperous landowner with a farm in the fertile vega (valley) near Granada and a comfortable villa in the heart of the city.

García Lorca did not turn to writing until Segura's death in 1916, and his first prose works, such as "Nocturne", "Ballade", and "Sonata", drew on musical forms.

In 1916 and 1917, García Lorca travelled throughout Castile, León, and Galicia, in northern Spain, with a professor of his university, who also encouraged him to write his first book, Impresiones y paisajes [es] (Impressions and Landscapes—printed at his father's expense in 1918).

[11] At the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid, García Lorca befriended Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí and many other creative artists who were, or would become, influential across Spain.

[11] He was taken under the wing of the poet Juan Ramón Jiménez, becoming close to playwright Eduardo Marquina and Gregorio Martínez Sierra, the Director of Madrid's Teatro Eslava.

García Lorca's first book of poems, Libro de poemas, was published in 1921, collecting work written from 1918, and selected with the help of his brother Francisco (nicknamed Paquito).

The year before, García Lorca had begun to write his Poema del cante jondo [es] ("Poem of the Deep Song", not published until 1931), so he naturally composed an essay on the art of flamenco,[13] and began to speak publicly in support of the Concurso.

He later described the double faces as self-portraits, showing "man's capacity for crying as well as winning," in line with his conviction that sorrow and joy were as inseparable as life and death.

García Lorca describes the work as a "carved altar piece" of Andalusia with "gypsies, horses, archangels, planets, its Jewish and Roman breezes, rivers, crimes, the everyday touch of the smuggler and the celestial note of the naked children of Córdoba.

"[18] Growing estrangement between García Lorca and his closest friends reached its climax when surrealists Dalí and Luis Buñuel collaborated on their 1929 film Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog).

[22] They stayed mostly in New York City, where Rios started a lecture tour and García Lorca enrolled at Columbia University School of General Studies, funded by his parents.

"[22] His experiences travelling through impoverished rural Spain and New York (particularly amongst the disenfranchised African-American population), transformed him into a passionate advocate of the theatre of social action.

"[22] While touring with La Barraca, García Lorca wrote his now best-known plays, the "Rural Trilogy" of Blood Wedding, Yerma and The House of Bernarda Alba, which all rebelled against the norms of bourgeois Spanish society.

This attempted to define a schema of artistic inspiration, arguing that great art depends upon a vivid awareness of death, connection with a nation's soil, and an acknowledgement of the limitations of reason.

His last poetic work, Sonetos de amor oscuro (Sonnets of Dark Love, 1936), was long thought to have been inspired by his passion for Rafael Rodríguez Rapún, young actor and secretary of La Barraca.

[32] Documents and mementos revealed in 2012, suggest that the actual inspiration was Juan Ramírez de Lucas, a 19-year-old with whom Lorca hoped to emigrate to Mexico.

Here he wrote, totally or in part, some of his major works, among them When Five Years Pass (Así que pasen cinco años) (1931), Blood Wedding (1932), Yerma (1934) and Diván del Tamarit (1931–1936).

[36][37] Political and social tensions had greatly intensified after the July 1936 murder of prominent monarchist and anti-Popular Front spokesman José Calvo Sotelo by Republican Assault Guards (Guardias de asalto).

[42] The author Ian Gibson in his book The Assassination of García Lorca argues that he was shot with three others (Joaquín Arcollas Cabezas, Francisco Galadí Melgar and Dióscoro Galindo González) at a place known as the Fuente Grande ('Great Spring') which is on the road between Víznar and Alfacar.

The Franco-era report, dated 9 July 1965, describes the writer as a "socialist" and "freemason belonging to the Alhambra lodge", who engaged in "homosexual and abnormal practices".

García Lorca's biographer, Stainton, states that his killers made remarks about his sexual orientation, suggesting that it played a role in his death.

[47] Ian Gibson suggests that García Lorca's assassination was part of a campaign of mass killings intended to eliminate supporters of the Leftist Popular Front.

The year 2000 saw the foundation of the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory, which grew out of the quest by a sociologist, Emilio Silva-Barrera, to locate and identify the remains of his grandfather, who was shot by Franco's forces in 1936.

[62] In October 2009, Francisco Espínola, a spokesman for the Justice Ministry of the Andalusian regional government, said that after years of pressure, García Lorca's body would "be exhumed in a matter of weeks.

South African Roman Catholic poet Roy Campbell, who enthusiastically supported the Nationalists both during and after the Civil War, later produced acclaimed translations of Lorca's work.

Close to the olive tree indicated by some as marking the location of the grave, there is a stone memorial to Federico García Lorca and all other victims of the Civil War, 1936–1939.

On 17 August 2011, to remember the 75th anniversary of Lorca's assassination and to celebrate his life and legacy, this event included dance, song, poetry and dramatic readings and attracted hundreds of spectators.