Lorca was Censored

Did you know that Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca was gay? I did not. But then I am a philistine who knows only one word of spanish (mantequilla), and who hasn't read much foreign poetry. I was therefore interested to read in the Indy of a new book coming out - 'Lorca y el mundo gay' (Lorca and the Gay World).

Lorca was assassinated by death squads at the start of the Spanish Civil War. In the book review, the author of the biography, Ian Gibson:

" describes how the poet's works were censored to conceal his sexuality. It was not until the late 1980s that Lorca's sexual identity became grudgingly acknowledged, in the face of denials and evasions. Gibson blames the decades of silence on a deep-seated Spanish homophobia. "Spain couldn't accept that the greatest Spanish poet of all time was homosexual. Homophobia existed on both sides in the civil war and afterwards; it was a national problem. Now Spain permits same-sex marriage that taboo must be broken.""

LIttle steps ...

The whole piece should be found here.