Lorca's Sonnets of Dark Love, written in November 1935 and long suppressed by Lorca's family, were first published in a clandestine edition of 250 numbered copies in December 1983. As a result of this mysterious printing, Lorca's family was apparently pressured to finally officially publish the eleven sonnets in March 1984 in the Spanish newspaper ABC.

Curiously, what was most controversial were not the poems themselves, in which the beloved's sex or gender is never explicitly identified, but rather the title of the cycle of poems. The Lorca family wished to entitle the cycle Sonetos (Sonnets) or Sonetos de amor (Love Sonnets), the latter being the title under which they finally appeared in ABC and in the new 1986 Aguilar edition of Lorca's complete works.

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Apparently, the title Sonetos del amor oscuro (Sonnets of Dark Love) had obvious homosexual overtones that had to be suppressed. Although it is true that Lorca left no document corroborating the title Sonetos del amor oscuro, a number of individuals who knew the poet well claim that this was the title he used to refer to them.

Lorca's Achievement

As a poet and dramatist, Lorca demonstrated an enormous thematic breadth and technical virtuosity. Although there is no denying that his early childhood in Andalusia left a mark on his artistic sensibility, perhaps his greatest achievement was his ability to avoid the trappings of a superficial folksy style by skillfully combining traditional popular motifs (Andalusian gypsies, flamenco music, bullfighters, the Guardia Civil, among others) with a brilliant modern sensibility that stylized and elevated the motifs onto a universal plane.

Lorca's account of gypsies persecuted by the sinister Guardia Civil (Gypsy Ballads and Poem of the Deep Song), the oppression of blacks in Harlem (section II of Poet in New York), and the sexual repression of Andalusian women (Blood Wedding and The House of Bernarda Alba) portray marginalized figures who, like the homosexual, are persecuted by a dominant morality hostile to the open expression of difference.

Madrid, Spain's largest city, has a long history of official efforts to eradicate sexual and gender deviance, but has recently made great strides in the struggle for equality for its glbtq population.

Before Stonewall, censorship of the theater caused authors to encode homosexual content in publicly-presented plays.

Treating homosexuality in Spanish literature is largely a twentieth-century phenomenon, occurring most frequently in the post-Franco decades.

Versatile Colombian-born author Jaime Manrique has written novels, short stories, poetry, and works of nonfiction with gay themes.

Celebrating an ideal of manly love in both its spiritual and physical aspects, Walt Whitman has exerted a profound and enduring influence on gay literature.