Memories. A Brief History of a Love Affair

In the early months of 1936, Federico García Lorca and Juan Ramírez de Lucas, a young student and amateur actor whom the poet nicknamed “the blond from Albacete,” had a secret relationship. The Spanish Civil War and Lorca’s murder brought their love story to an abrupt and irrevocable end. This volume of memories and documents is an exceptional literary and historical event: the firsthand testimony of the man who shared Lorca’s final months in Madrid before his departure for Granada, and who received the last known letter written by the author of Blood Wedding shortly before his murder.

Accompanied by an extraordinary collection of materials that remained unpublished for nearly a century—including drawings, a poem and a letter, photographs, and handwritten documents by García Lorca—Memories: A Brief History of a Love Affair fulfils Juan Ramírez de Lucas’s wish to overcome “a dense tangle of prejudices and taboos” and offer a new, intimate portrait of the poet during the final months of his life, helping to heal the open wound that this great secret left in his own life.

Edited by Hispanist Christopher Maurer and journalist Víctor Fernández, these pages shed light on one of the most fascinating and little-known episodes in twentieth-century Spanish literature. They represent an essential contribution to Lorca’s legacy while preserving for posterity the most intimate and personal voice of Juan Ramírez de Lucas.