In the last poem of the Sonetos del amor oscuro, Federico García Lorca wrote: “Tú nunca entenderás lo que te quiero / porque duermes en mí y estás dormido”. To Javier Calvo, the upper half of the artistic duo known as els Javis, the letter o at the end of dormido particularly caught his attention. “I read it as an adolescent and thought it was a typo, but no, it said dormido, not dormida, and it referred to a man –he explains–. But in school textbooks, it was omitted that Lorca was gay, as if it were a shame or as if it were not important to explain who he was. And we must remember that he was murdered, among other things, for being homosexual. It has not been sufficiently explained that the second most important author in Spanish literature is gay, nor from what pain and what wound his work came from”.

Some images stubbornly survive the passage of time. Federico García Lorca, one of the most important Spanish-language poets of the 20th century, was murdered in August 1936 by a firing squad of soldiers from the Francoist side and buried so that no one would ever find him again. Today, however, we can see his face again, with perfect clarity, in a 1920s car, climbing a mountain. He is in the back seat with other people. The images could be from 1932, and he was traveling with the legendary theater company La Barraca. It is one of the few moving images of one of the great exponents of the Generation of '27 and an internationally renowned author.

In the autumn of 1935, ninety years ago this year, Barcelona was gripped by a wave of enthusiasm for the plays of Federico García Lorca. There were 142 performances of four of his plays in three different theaters: The silly lady, Yerma, Blood Wedding and Doña Rosita the spinster, which was a world premiere. During his stay of about four months in the city to prepare everything, Lorca reunited with Dalí after being estranged for many years. He also met Gala, but he didn't like her and she became jealous.