Miguel Poveda: “Any discovery by Lorca is a treasure that belongs to us and it is poetic justice that it is visible”

The singer Miguel Poveda The documentary premieres this Thursday, April 23, in theaters ‘Enlorquecido’, an audiovisual tour of some of the places that marked the life and work of Federico García Lorca. The project has led him to acquire the poet’s manuscript ‘Gazelle of the bitter root’ belonging to ‘Diván del Tamarit’, on the back of which he has found an unpublished poem by the Granada writer from 1933, titled ‘Sing the clock’.

“Any find from Federico is gold and is a treasure that belongs to us and It is poetic justice that he is visible because one does not know where his body is and his voice is not known.so whenever something about him appears it seems magical to me because he has been silenced for many years,” Poveda said in an interview with Europa Press.

The artist regrets that, after Lorca’s death in 1936, “absolute silence and a prohibition” on speaking about a writer who wanted to “transform Spain and make it like any European country“. That desire to change the world has been Poveda’s driving force to trace the poet’s footsteps. “Lorca was a man who was determined to change the world and wanted to bring culture to the most remote towns and places. I did not want an uncultured Spain“, he pointed out.

Regarding Lorca’s activism, Poveda links her commitment to oppressed women to her own identity. “His homosexuality and also feeling oppressed made him develop empathy with the disadvantaged and have a sense of justice and equality.“, he says. The singer describes Lorca as someone “tormented and sad” who, despite his public joviality, carried the shadow of a love that “he could not freely demonstrate.”

In this sense, Poveda assures that Spain has an “outstanding debt” with Lorca but also with an entire generation of women and artists who were “silenced, mistreated and condemned to exile.” “It was a generation that was lost and we must vindicate all those figures because they were very talented. “It was a golden generation and they represented a golden age of culture that was brutally mutilated,” he expressed.

The film traces Lorca’s impact in New York, Havana and Buenos Aires, where the poet is treated with the same devotion as figures like Gardel or Maradona. “There he left an indelible mark. It was where he experienced the triumph and fervor of the people“says Poveda, citing places like the Hotel Castilar or the Café Tortoni that still preserve the spirit of the Granada native. According to the singer, in Argentina Lorca is a “symbol.”

The singer confesses that he lives a “blessed obsession” with reconstructing the author’s steps, even tracing old photographs to identify walls or corners where Lorca was present.

Regarding the management of Lorca’s legacy, Poveda believes that Granada has “pending tasks” because there are plots of the poet’s life that are still “unknown.” “I’m not saying this in a critical way but that the circumstances were what they were. They did not take into account the building where Federico lived in Granada“, he lamented. “I think we have to mark and draw a map where people from Granada and those from outside who look for Lorca can find him in the places he frequented,” suggests Poveda, who in the documentary places plaques in tribute to Lorca in some important places in his life.

Finally, Poveda reveals that ‘Enlorquecido’ is not the end of his commitment, since he is immersed in a personal “fight” for the city of Granada to install a sculpture of Lorca in the central Plaza de las Batallas.

Finally, as a closing to this trip down memory lane, Poveda reveals that, if he could record a definitive plaque in the collective imagination about Lorca, he would choose his own verses. “I’m not here. It is the sign of meat that I left when I left to know my place when I returned.“, he adds in reference to the recently discovered unpublished poem.