In the early hours of August 19, 1936, troops of General Franco's fascist Falange took the poet and dramatist Federico García Lorca to Fuente Grande amidst the olive groves north-east of his beloved home city of Granada.
There, he was executed by firing squad.
Lorca was gay, left-wing and a revered artist. For the fascists, these were reasons enough to murder the greatest poet in the history of Andalusia, and one of the greatest in all of Spain. It is in honour of Lorca and the wounds of Spain's catastrophic Civil War that famed Flamenco artist Paco Peña has created his latest work Patrias (Motherland). The piece interweaves projected moving and still images, recorded poetry and prose, and musical recordings from the period (both Republican and fascist) with live, ensemble performance. The regard shown to moments of bravery and suffering on the Falangist side gives a greater moral authority to this unambiguously anti-fascist art work. A song sung by Republicans during the war crackles on an old record player. As it fades away, Peña picks up the tune on his guitar and, as he plays, his dancers perform an evocatively balletic, controlled form of Flamenco.
The Chilean poet Pablo Neruda laments his murdered friend Lorca as "a multiplier of beautifulness". Lorca's ghost visits us in a recording of his piano playing. In every moment, the work creates meaningful connections between the historical material and the live performance.
It could hardly do otherwise. Peña is a master in the evocation of the concept of duende, which sits astride desire and death. And there is no better art form than Flamenco in which to celebrate the life and mourn the death of Lorca, the great Andalusian poet of duende.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article