Federico Garcia Lorca

It's a shame that so many people have never heard of him.  Many may not be aware of Federico, but this legendary gay Spanish poet and playwright went to college with Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí.    He had a steamy affair (how sexual it was remains in question) with Dalí.   In addition to poems, he wrote plays like Blood Wedding and The House of Bernarda Alba.  Dalí said about Federico that  "He was homosexual, as everyone knows, and madly in love with me. He tried to screw me twice .... I was extremely annoyed, because I wasn’t homosexual, and I wasn’t interested in giving in. Besides, it hurts. So nothing came of it. But I felt awfully flattered vis-à-vis the prestige. Deep down I felt that he was a great poet and that I owe him a tiny bit of the Divine Dalí's asshole. He eventually bagged a young girl, and she replaced me in the sacrifice. Failing to get me to put my ass at his disposal, he swore that the girl’s sacrifice was matched by his own: it was the first time he had ever slept with a woman."  There's so much about Dali's statement that contradicts itself, but they belong to him and not Federico. 

Mr. Lorca suffered severe depression and guilt about being a man who loved other men, which seems to have become especially intense with reagrds to casual encounters with strangers throughout his life.  Many en seemed to be attracted to him, .  Many describe him as being very charismatic in person, something that photographs of him aren't able to fully capture. He also had the physical attractiveness to draw sexual attention to himself.
Controversy still remains about the motives and details of Lorca's murder. While not considered likely by most historians, some believe that it was his gay personal life that was the reason for his death instead of his politics and the govenment.  It's believed that he died in 1936 when soldiers dragged him into a field, shot him and tossed his body into an unmarked grave.  Franco's government tried to obliterate Lorca's memory.  His books were prohibited, his name forbidden.  His poetry has been translated into a dozen languages and his name is known worldwide.

Lorca and Dalí

 

Death in Granada was a 1996 movie about his life.  In the film, a journalist starts an investigation into the disappearance of poet and political agitator, Garcia Lorca, who disappeared in the early days of the Spanish Civil War in the the 1930's. Then came the film Little Ashes, a 2008 Spanish-Britis film.