Boletín 74 - A very special illustrated LCDBA edition on secondary sources.

A belated happy New Year!

Late January I had a wave of inspiration and combined with my wife spent days working soley on the image at the top of this weeks Boletín. So 31st January at 10pm I was illustrating a peace lily. Sad, I know. It was a learning curve with an app called Procreate and it took a long time to achieve the end result. I hope you like it! Skip to the bottom to watch a timelapse of our work. For the first time I wrote all the articles myself so this is a small milestone! Thank you to @nunubelle76 for proofreading this one.

This week’s Boletín will serve as an AO4 booster for those studying La Casa de Bernarda Alba. Edition 44, released long before I used Substack, featured articles on Lorca’s siding with the poor, the real life Frasquita Alba who was the inspiration for Bernarda and Lorca’s social sensibility. In this edition 74 the articles are on la tradición del noviazgo, los hogares multigeneracionales and eI luto riguroso.

I’ve also partly made this to advertise my classroom lending library to my year 13s and provide some interesting stories gleaned from reading around the topic of Spain and Lorca. Doing this would provide opportunities for students to frame LCDBA in the context of Andalucía in the 30s. Maybe just maybe some of what they read will make it’s way into a year 13 essay! What follows is a short summary of each book from the image below. I hope you find something worth reading more about, feel free to suggest any other books you consider recommended reading on the topic. If you are a student reading this, as I know some of you are (thanks by the way) then read the summaries below, pick a book to read and invest in yourself.

Books, books and more books. This took a long time to create.

Books

Ghosts of Spain - buy from Amazon

On my PGCE I was assigned a project to increase my subject knowledge on an aspect of the Spanish speaking world which I thought needed work. I knew nothing about the Civil War so Ghosts of Spain was the first book I read on the topic. Giles Tremlett, a journalist, embarks on a journey to find out more about Spain’s dark past. It is well-informed account of Spain today.

People of the Sierra - buy here from Amazon

Just beaten by South from Granada to the number one spot. J. A. Pitt-Rivers was a social anthropologist who conducted research into the values, social structure, lifestyle and norms of a typical Spanish pueblo. The result is a fascinating book with acute observations made on relationships, friendship, courting, politics, community life and much more. This book could have been written in the pueblo where Bernarda Alba lives and so provides the perfect contextual backdrop to Lorca’s “photographic documentary”. Get this book!

Conciencia Social en las tres dramas rurales de García Lorca - listed here

I picked this up from a site I have found many hidden gems on (Todocoleccion.net). This 39-page booklet was published by University of Granada in 1981. It addresses Lorca’s social sensibility in Yerma, Bodas de Sangre and LCDBA. There are only two copies left on todocoleccion so be quick if you want one!

Trienta y una entrevistas a García Lorca - buy here from Amazon

This is a fascinating book. A compilation of interviews with Lorca which are transcribed verbatim and sorted into topics.

South from Granada - buy here from Amazon

Maybe my favourite book on the topic. Gerald Brenan moves to a small town in Las Alpujarras and documents his experiences. In a rather amusing section he locks eyes with a woman observing him from her window and a courtship ensues. This book is highly readable for anybody interested in Spain, it’s less of a social anthropological work like People of the Sierra and more of a documentation of the goings on in town by an interested and informed observer. I have read this maybe three times and will read it again soon, I sometimes start my LCDBA lessons with readings from this book. A classic.

Lorca: el poeta y su pueblo - listed here

Quite specialist. Maybe you’ve wondered why Lorca was held in such high regard by the working classes, peasants and gypsies in Spain? Or to what extent he represented through his poetry and plays the people of Spain and how in touch was he with the normal Spaniard and social/economic/political situation of the time? To be fair you probably haven’t asked yourself these questions but if you want to know more then it’s worth a read. There are only four copies of this left on todocoleccion.net but it isn’t cheap.

The Face of Spain - buy here from Amazon

(Description taken from Amazon) Gerald Brenan returned to Spain in 1949 for the first time since the Civil War. He was determined to see what had become of the country he loved, to speak to ordinary people and to experience life in small towns unvisited by foreigners. He had earlier lived in a remote village in the Sierra Nevada — now he returned to a land in the grip of famine where guerrilleros roamed the mountains and thousands of people were reduced to living in caves.

Bodas de sangre - buy here from Amazon

One of Lorca’s three tragic plays along with Yerma and LCDBA. In Bodas de Sangre there is love, death, an arranged marriage, rural tradition and tragedy. Lorca uses clear symbolism in this play of only 85 pages.

Yerma - buy here from Amazon

(Description taken from Amazon as I couldn’t have said it better) One of three tragic plays about peasants and rural life that make up Lorca’s ‘rural trilogy’. It is possibly Lorca’s harshest play following a woman’s Herculean struggle against the curse of infertility. The woman’s barrenness becomes a metaphor for her marriage in a traditional society that denies women sexual or social equality. Her desperate desire for a child drives her to commit a terrible crime at the end of the play.

The Spanish Labyrinth - buy here from Amazon

This book, I believe, was banned under the Franco dictatorship. I read it over the course of a year as it packs a punch. Gerald Brenan was a highly-acclaimed hispanist and in this book he unravels the social and political background of Spain before the Spanish Civil War. There are large chapters on the conditions of the working class, the Republic, the dictatorship and all the factions involved. This is complex stuff, what were the differences between anarchists, socialists, marxists and communists? Reading this is a challenge but will help paint a picture of rural working life in a town not dissimiliar from the one Bernarda and her daughters live in. I actually made a resource for this here.

Guerra - buy here from Amazon

Great reading to build knowledge of modern Spain’s attitude to the war which is a divisive taboo subject. Having moved to Spain and discovered a mass grave from the war practically on his doorstep Jason Webster undertakes a journey to find out more about the Spanish Civil War. Jason Webster has written several books on Spain all of which are highly readable and entertaining.

Federico García Lorca - A Life - buy here from Amazon

This is written by Ian Gibson, a hispanist, who is considered the gold standard when it comes to all things Lorca. This biography covers Lorca’s upbringing, formative years and national/international recognition. Gibson explores Lorca’s politics, works, travels, education and death.

Vida y muerte de Federico García Lorca - buy here from Amazon

I love this book. If you don’t fancy reading the biography by Ian Gibson you can pick this 100-page graphic novel up. Lorca’s story is told and the illustrations are beautiful. All the key information is there and it’s more digestible than Ian Gibson’s 600-page tome.

Death rituals in early 20th century Andalusia - read for free here

This is the the most recent secondary reading I’ve done on LCDBA and I found this thesis very enlightening. The author, a social anthropologist, explores the various stages of the death/mourning process with reference to LCDBA. I found the references to wearing black, praying, limiting behaviour and not leaving the house very applicable to any appreciation of the veracity of LCDBA. I discovered that bell tolls signify that somebody has just died and learnt that although 8 years of mourning is severe, 5 years was quite common and for a widow the mourning could last the rest of his/her life. The conventional norms for mourning were more severe for women and it was common for men to bend these rules.

Structures to explore in edition 74:

1. The preterite tense

2. The imperfect tense

3. Definite articles

4. Ser/estar

5. Direct Object Pronouns

Vocabulary to be aware of in edition 74:

1. Darse cuenta - To realise

2. De primera mano - First-hand

3. Cortejar - To court

4. Sin vergüenza - Shameless

5. El luto - Mourning

6. Rezar el rosario - To pray the rosary

If you’ve made it this far then thanks for reading. Most Boletín issues take 3 hours or so to make. This edition has taken about 12 hours+ factoring in research, reading, illustrating, the writing of the articles and this Revue issue. Added to that is the fact my wife helped me in her own free time! Please consider buying us a coffee so we can keep it up! A Volver edition will follow along the same lines in the future which I’m looking forward to makin

Download edition 74 here.

All the best,

Ollie