174. Blood Wedding by Federico García Lorca

The Spanish title of Lorca’s great modernist play is Bodas de Sangre, or ‘Wedding of Blood’. The title and theme came from a murder committed in 1928 in the town of Nijar in the Spanish province of Almería, when a young woman, Francisca Cañada Morales, ran off with her cousin, Francisco Montes Cañada, moments before her wedding to a local man. The cousin was then shot dead by the prospective bridegroom’s brother. Lorca read about the incident in the Heraldo de Madrid newspaper and kept the cutting until he came to write the play in 1932. One odd titular circumstance remains to complicate matters, however. In 1927, a year before the murders, a film called Bodas Sangrientas (‘Bloody Wedding’) was shown in Barcelona and Madrid, based on the novel Beatrice Cenci by Luciano Doria. It’s not known whether Lorca saw the film; some critics are more sanguine than others.

Consulted:
Lima, Robert: The Theatre of García Lorca‎ (1963)

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