Spanish broadcasting network Onda Cero Podcast has released Lorca en Nueva York in Madrid to mark the 90th anniversary of the assassination of Granada poet Federico García Lorca. The author died on August 18, 1936, during the early stages of the Spanish Civil War.
Director and actor Alberto San Juan leads and interprets the new audio work, which converts Lorca's poetry and prose into a sound experience accompanied by live musicians. The project focuses on the writing Lorca produced while living in New York between 1929 and 1930.
Onda Cero Podcast created the production to highlight the poetic, political, and human dimensions of Lorca's work. The network stated that the project aims to introduce the poet's writing to new generations by combining literary recitation, dramatic performance, and live musical accompaniment.
Audio adaptation and musical ensemble
The production pairs San Juan's performance with a live musical score performed by a four-piece band. The ensemble features Claudio de Casas on guitar, Pablo Navarro on double bass, Gabriel Marijuan on drums, and Miguel Malla playing saxophone and keyboards.
San Juan, a prominent Spanish theater and film actor known for his stage recitals of classic Spanish literature, adapted Lorca's texts into a continuous dramatic and musical narrative. Onda Cero, one of Spain's major national radio broadcasters, distributes the series across its digital podcast platform.
Historical context and New York stay
García Lorca arrived in New York City in 1929, arriving just a few months prior to the Wall Street stock market crash of October 1929. The economic collapse and the social upheaval that followed profoundly altered his perspective on the modern industrial metropolis.
During his residence in the United States, Lorca closely observed urban social inequalities, the dominance of industrial capitalism, and the perceived dehumanization of modern city life. These observations became central themes in the poetry he composed during his stay.
The podcast takes listeners through key locations that shaped Lorca's American experience, including Manhattan, Wall Street, and Harlem. Onda Cero noted that Lorca viewed the city and its anonymous crowds with a mixture of fascination, disquiet, and social commitment.
Publication history of Poet in New York
The poems that formed the collection Poeta en Nueva York were written between 1929 and 1930 during Lorca's residence in New York and his subsequent travels in Cuba. Lorca moved to Cuba in early 1930 before returning to Spain later that year.
Despite being completed a decade earlier, the book was not published until 1940, four years after Lorca's assassination at the onset of the Spanish Civil War. His death in August 1936 meant he never saw the collection printed in book form.
Onda Cero emphasized that the core themes of the work, including social injustice, personal alienation, and the loss of humanity in contemporary society, remain directly relevant to modern public debates 90 years after the writer's death.
