Author’s Web site:

http://bigfoot.com/~daniel.eisenberg

Author’s address:

daniel.eisenberg@bigfoot.com

[Please see my later article, “Unanswered Questions about Lorca’s

Death,” available on my Web site.]

The Death of Lorca. By Ian Gibson. Allen, London, and O’Hara,

Chicago, 1973. 217 pages.

This polemical and eminently readable book, probably the

final one of this most controversial of topics, is a revised and

Lorca (Paris, 1971). Gibson’s strength is his exhumation and

exploration of new sources, and where his book is good, it is very

good indeed. He succeeded in talking to the evasive Ramón Ruiz

Alonso, smuggling in with him a tape recorder, and unearthed a

which has important biographical information. He located and

won the confidence of Angelina, the maid of the Montesinos

family, who carried Federico his meals while he was in the

Granada jail. By some wizardry he was able to consult in the

days of the revolt. He consulted the cemetery records of Granada,

and identifies and reproduces the death certificate of another man

executed together with Lorca.

This is first-rate sleuthing, and from documents and numerous

interviews Gibson has been able to establish some things for the

first time and to provide substantiation for others. The uprising in

Granada was surely accompanied by widespread executions. The

operation to remove Lorca from the Rosales’ house, where he was

hiding, was undoubtedly headed by Ruiz Alonso, and he was taken

to jail in the car of Alonso’s friend Juan Trescastro. Once in jail,

he was kept there several days, presumably so that the governor

Valdés could consult with Queipo de Llano about his fate. Gibson

knows even the names of the members of the death squad at

Víznar, which he decided not to publish.

This is all the mechanics of the execution, however, and when

discussing the more important question of the motives, Gibson’s

analysis is less satisfying. In an important clarification, he

disproves the theory that Lorca’s death was in retaliation for the

supposed assassination of Benavente, documenting John Crow’s

observation that the first news of Benavente’s “assassination”

appeared after Lorca’s death. But he has nothing to suggest in its

place, save Lorca’s friendship with Republican politicians, and

ends with the lame conclusion that “Lorca was assassinated by a

state of mind” (p. 135).

There is a disturbing amount of previously printed information,

some very important, which escaped Gibson’s attention,

which space only allows me to list: Antonio de la Villa, “Un

evadido de Granada cuenta el fusilamiento de García Lorca,”

extraordinario, January, 1937], 7); Roberto Castrovido, “¿Vive el

December, 1936, 24 and 41; the speech of Fernando de los Ríos,

La Prensa (New York, 11 October 1937), p. 3 (cf. Vicente Sáenz,

Language Forum, 25 [1940], 179); “García Lorca fue muerto por

Martínez Nadal’s introduction to Spender and Gili’s translations

Review, 152 (1939), 226; and Lloyd Mallan, “Granada, Oh!

precise detail, that letters found at the Huerta de San Vicente

contributed to the decision to arrest Lorca; the fourth suggests that

Rosales’ house was not a safe refuge because two sons (i.e., Pepe

and Antonio) were Falange members.

Gibson accepts, with no clear-cut explanation why, all that

Luis and Miguel Rosales have told him, ignoring the implications

of a substantial contradiction in their own testimony (p. 196, n.

23), and the fact that more than one scholar reports them as having

said things they now deny. He never mentions the fact that the

Lorca family to this day has not forgiven the Rosales, which

would be very strange if it was, as Gibson concludes, the Lorca

family that had told Ruiz Alonso where Federico was hiding and

if the Rosales had protected him to the best of their ability and at

considerable personal risk; apparently Gibson has never heard the

persistent rumors that someone in the Rosales family had foreknowledge

of the arrest and that the absence of all the men was no

coincidence. Gibson dismisses all of Schonberg’s evidence, partly

on Luis Rosales’ authority, and I believe that he is incorrect in

doing so, at least on that basis. Schonberg’s documentation is not

always conclusive but I do not think he has invented his evidence—

it would be much more convincing evidence if he

had—and a thorough explanation would tell us how he came to

say the things he does. One of Schonberg’s allegations, Ruiz

Alonso’s homosexuality, Gibson can refute only through Ruiz

Alonso’s denial, surprising when has elsewhere in the book so

thoroughly destroyed Ruiz Alonso’s credibility.

Even though Schonberg sent me several letters with many

interesting, although unsubstantiated, details, I cannot see the

validity of his theories any more than Gibson can. The irony of

Gibson’s book, though, is that he himself has given us the first

solid evidence—that is, other than that of Schonberg—that

Lorca’s assassination had other than a purely political origin.

Gibson concludes that Ruiz Alonso and his two friends Trescastro

and García Alix were the ones responsible for Lorca’s arrest, and

emphasizes that they were not responsible for any other arrests.

Ruiz Alonso’s current statements Gibson demonstrates to be full

of contradictions; García Alix would not talk to him, and he

ignores, again without saying why, a very blunt statement of

Trescastro about his motivation (p. 128). Nevertheless, Gibson

demonstrates, for the first time, that Lorca was in great fear of

Ruiz Alonso in Madrid and before the outbreak of the revolt;

Gibson concludes that “there may have existed between them

some mutual antagonism” (p. 51). I am startled to see that despite

the fact that Ruiz Alonso has been accused in print of causing

Lorca’s death for personal reasons, Gibson has apparently made

no attempt to discover what this “mutual antagonism” was due to,

and does not see any need to reconcile it with his thesis that

Lorca’s death must be studied in the context of the Granada revolt

and subsequent repression. I was even more concerned when I

found that Gibson misquoted Manuel de Falla, who was told on

the day of Lorca’s assassination, before any cover-up attempt

began, that his death was either “un error” or “una venganza

personal”; he later said that he had arrived at the conclusion that

mundo [Buenos Aires, 1958], p. 200; cf. Gibson, p. 108). If de

Falla was mistaken, if he also was lied to, Gibson should say so,

and tell us, if he can, why; by skipping over it in his paraphrase of

the passage, he creates the presumption that he has no answer to

it.

How this all fits together I wish I knew, but there are too many

loose ends and uncollected pieces of the puzzle to accept Gibson’s

reconstruction in its entirety. Gibson is obviously a competent

scholar, even if he gets a bit carried away with a justified indignation

over the events in Granada in 1936. I hope he will publish a

revised edition of his book with a definitive explanation, and put

an end to the speculation which as things stand now is bound to

continue.

DANIEL EISENBERG