Patricia Langa parades on to an invisible stage in a basement room of Instituto Cervantes in central London, locked into the character of Conchita, an eternally grieving Spanish widow loosely based on the sorrowful heroines of Federico Garc\u00eda Lorca\u2019s 1936 play, The House of Bernarda Alba.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis voice was too loud, too queer, too alive for those around him, filled with jealousy and hatred,\u201d she tells her imagined audience. \u201cSo they silenced him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Langa is rehearsing her cabaret-cum-drag ode to Lorca, which she will perform as part of the Festival of Queer Spanish Culture, taking place in London this November. Combining flamenco, lip-sync and poetry, the show imagines a funeral for the poet and playwright, 90 years since he was killed by Franco\u2019s nationalist regime. His body was never found.<\/p>\n
The performance feeds into a growing embrace of Lorca among Spain\u2019s LGBTQ+ community. From viral Booktoks<\/a>, drag memorials<\/a>, documentaries<\/a>, book clubs<\/a> and, most recently, the Oscar-tipped film La Bola Negra<\/a>, the Andaluc\u00edan poet has emerged as an increasingly important queer icon in Spain.<\/p>\n For Langa, studying Lorca\u2019s work through a queer lens has led to a deeper, more personal, connection with it. \u201cHe went out there and told stories that are not typical,\u201d she says. His first play, The Butterfly\u2019s Evil Spell, about the forbidden love between a cockroach and a butterfly, serves as one example. \u201cA lot of his work is about being different. There is something quite magical about understanding these little tricks that he used to share something that maybe he publicly didn\u2019t feel he was able to.\u201d<\/p>\n Born near Granada in 1898, Lorca rose to be one of Spain\u2019s greatest writers in his lifetime. Although there was speculation about his homosexuality, allegedly a factor in his murder, Lorca was never openly gay. Homosexuality was violently oppressed during the Franco regime, and Spain was one of the last western countries to decriminalise same-sex relations \u2013 sentences for which were only cleared in 2001<\/a>.<\/p>\n Queer icon \u2026 Federico Garc\u00eda Lorca. Photograph: Sipa Press\/Rex Features<\/p>\n In the decades after Lorca\u2019s death, any mention of Lorca\u2019s queerness was hushed by his family and Spain\u2019s literary circles \u2013 academics and writers who feared being denied access to the family\u2019s archives and university resources, would pussyfoot around the topic as a result.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you went around saying that Lorca was gay, the door was shut,\u201d says Ian Gibson, one of Spain\u2019s most respected Lorca biographers. Gibson refers to a biography written by Lorca\u2019s brother, Francisco<\/a>, published posthumously in 1980, as an example. \u201cIn that book the word homosexual doesn\u2019t appear. There is no allusion to his sexuality.\u201d Gibson\u2019s own groundbreaking biography of Lorca came out in 1985 to critical acclaim. \u201cI put homosexuality in the centre of the picture,\u201d he says, \u201cand that was the end of my relationship with the family.\u201d<\/p>\n Gibson\u2019s subsequent 2009 book, Lorca y el Mundo Gay<\/a>, delved deeper into the poet\u2019s sexuality and has been a key resource for readers looking to uncover more about Lorca\u2019s queerness. In Berkana, a queer bookshop in Madrid\u2019s gay Chueca district, copies of a pink-tinted reissue of the book from 2026 line the window display. \u201cIn Spain, we didn\u2019t speak about his sexuality for many years,\u201d says the bookseller, who says that the popularity of La Bola Negra, Spain\u2019s highest grossing film of the year, has led to a rise in demand for Lorca-related work. La Piedra Oscura, the play by Alberto Conejero on which the film is based, has become an unlikely bestseller.<\/p>\n An Irishman who moved to Spain in the 1960s in pursuit of studying Lorca \u2013 and subsequently became a citizen \u2013 Gibson is honoured in La Bola Negra through the character played by Glenn Close. True to accounts of the film, his interest in conveying the truth around Lorca\u2019s sexuality stems from his own personal circumstance: his brother, Alan, was gay, and died in a psychiatric clinic after a lifetime of trauma growing up in a puritanical methodist family in a wider closeted Irish society.<\/p>\n \u201c[My brother] has influenced my life at a very profound level and obviously is the basis for my fascination with Lorca,\u201d says Gibson, who is 87, over a cocido Madrile\u00f1o stew in Lavapi\u00e9s, his longtime home. \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s the least bit strange that Lorca is now a gay icon, I think he should be. And they\u2019ll tell you across the right that he\u2019s apolitical, but that\u2019s bullshit.\u201d<\/p>\n Recently, Lorca\u2019s queerness has also entered the Spanish political arena. Encouraged directly by Gibson, Spain\u2019s incumbent leftwing prime minister, Pedro S\u00e1nchez, has appropriated Lorca\u2019s ideals as part of his current political campaign, in the run-up to a tense snap election that will take place this November.<\/p>\n At a campaign speech in Granada on 24 October, S\u00e1nchez referred to the success of La Bola Negra, before reciting one of Lorca\u2019s poems. \u201cThis is the Spain of Lorca, the Spain that embraces the diverse and different,\u201d he said, addressing the crowd in a white shirt with the slogan La Fuerza del Amor (The Force of Love). Sanch\u00e9z faces tough competition from a unified right, with both the conservative People\u2019s Party and far-right Vox having campaigned to roll back LGBTQ+ rights across the country.<\/p>\n The past 40 years have seen Spain reckon with much of the horror inflicted by Franco on the LGBTQ+ community, moving to become one of the most progressive countries on gay rights. (It was the third country in the world to legalise same-sex marriage in 2005.) However, the current rise in far-right homophobic attitudes has sent shock waves through Spain\u2019s gay community<\/a>, which fears a regression to Francoist attitudes.<\/p>\n Lorca\u2019s sexuality has become increasingly significant in this current political climate \u2013 a point that La Bola Negra confronts directly, addressing the damaging consequences of the intergenerational trauma imprinted on Spain\u2019s queer community as a consequence of silence and shame.<\/p>\n Its star, \u00c1lvaro Lafuente Calvo, more widely known as Guitarricadelafuente, wished the film had been released when he was young. \u201cGrowing up in Spain there weren\u2019t many references,\u201d says the gay musician. \u201cLorca\u2019s desire was so profoundly linked to his art, it can\u2019t be separated. It was something that we didn\u2019t learn in school.\u201d<\/p>\n Set across three different timelines, inspired by Lorca\u2019s life and work, La Bola Negra focuses on Lorca\u2019s intimate relationship with Rafael Rodr\u00edguez Rap\u00fan, and his unfinished play La Bola Negra \u2013 his only work with an explicitly gay protagonist. Meanwhile, La Nieve \u2013 the original song Lafuente wrote for La Bola Negra, which reached the Top 10 of the Spanish charts \u2013 takes cues from Lorca\u2019s Sonnets of Dark Love, which is thought to be dedicated, at least in part, to Rap\u00fan.<\/p>\n La Nieve is a favourite for the best original song award at next year\u2019s Oscars, and is also the soundtrack to a queer-led viral trend where young Spaniards film themselves at the cinema before watching La Bola Negra and then afterwards in tears<\/p>\n \u201cWhat this film can shed a light on, and what moved me when I watched it, is acknowledging those stories that weren\u2019t able to happen, ever. Those impossible stories hidden in the ground,\u201d says Lafuente. \u201cI think this is a testimony of those stories and that it can help people see we cannot go back to that. Even though we think we\u2019ve achieved so much, we cannot take the freedom that we have for granted.\u201d<\/p>\n Langa, who watched the film while visiting her family in Barcelona, was among those in tears \u2013 and says the film has reaffirmed her admiration for the poet. \u201cLorca left us more than his poetry. He left us a way of seeing the world: finding beauty where others see shame, humanity where others see difference, and possibility where others impose limits.\u201d<\/p>\n Patricia Langa performs To Lorca With Amor at The Divine, London, on 21 November. La Bola Negra is in US and Australian cinemas now, and in UK cinemas from 6 November<\/p>\n