In the Last Refuge of Federico García Lorca, Granada (Spain): Part II

The center of Granada, Spain: Plaza de la Trinidad, summer of 2015. The nearby Hotel Reina Cristina was, in the summer of 1936, the home of the prosperous Rosales family; the men of the family -- even poet Luis Rosales  -- having joined the Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista fascist nationalists [in a more English form, the Traditionalist Spanish Falange and Juntas of the Nationalist Offensive], were nonetheless friends of the celebrated Granadan poet Federico García Lorca, and so he took refuge there, where all of them thought he'd be safe from more bloodthirsty Falangist elements. (Lorca was gay, one of the reasons he was specifically targeted for death).

August 10, 1936: Lorca "read notices . . . of more executions behind the Alhambra. He took time to study in the library, finding a medieval Spanish poet who enchanted him and whose verses he read aloud to the family. He thought of a poem to be composed with Luis . . ."  - Steven Nightingale, Granada: A Pomegranate in the Hand of God  (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2015), page 303. 

On August 16, 1936, Lorca's brother-in-law, mayor of Granada, was executed by Falangists. "That afternoon, police and military forces swarmed around the Rosaleses' house, occupying the block, watching from rooftops, taking up positions in the Plaza de la Trinidad. Esperanza Rosales, the matriarch of the family, refused to surrender [Federico] . . ." (Ibid.)

But they got him, despite attempts at protection by the Rosales family and by higher-ups, who were too late to spare him. 

In the early morning hours of August 18, 1936, the poet Federico García Lorca, a schoolteacher, and two matadors were taken to a village outside of Granada and shot, just before dawn. 

To these men, and to those still being killed in similar circumstances today, as in Bangladesh and around the world, a salute and an adieu. Let freedom ring!

Today's Rune: Fertility.