Federico García Lorca (5 June 1898 – 19 August 1936) was a Spanish poet, dramatist and theatre director. García Lorca achieved international recognition as an emblematic member of the Generation of '27. He was murdered at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War by persons likely affiliated with the Nationalist cause.

He is thought to be one of the many victims who 'disappeared' and were executed by the Nationalists. In 2008, a Spanish judge opened an investigation of García Lorca's death and his family dropped objections to the excavation of his possible grave. His time at Granada's Arts Club furnished him with influential associations that would prove useful following his move, in 1919, to the Residencia de estudiantes in Madrid.

Here he would befriend Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí and many other artists who were, or would become, influential across Spain. In Madrid, he met Gregorio Martínez Sierra, the Director of Madrid's Teatro Eslava. In 1919-20, at Sierra's invitation, he wrote and staged his first play, El maleficio de la mariposa .

Controversy surrounded García Lorca and the play as many considered him homosexual, and concluded that his play largely focused on women in order to mask his sexuality. It was a verse play dramatising the impossible love between a cockroach and a butterfly, with a supporting cast of other insects; it was laughed off stage by an unappreciative public after only four performances and influenced García Lorca's attitude to the theatre-going public for the rest of his career. He would later claim that Mariana Pineda, written in 1927, was, in fact, his first play.

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