‘His voice was too queer – so they silenced him’: how Spain’s national poet Lorca finally became a gay icon

The significance of the poet and playwright’s homosexuality was repressed in Spain for decades – but a spate of recent work, including the film La Bola Negra, is redressing the balance for a new generation

Patricia Langa parades on to an invisible stage in a basement room of Instituto Cervantes in central London, locked into the character of Conchita, an eternally grieving Spanish widow loosely based on the sorrowful heroines of Federico García Lorca’s 1936 play, The House of Bernarda Alba.

“His voice was too loud, too queer, too alive for those around him, filled with jealousy and hatred,” she tells her imagined audience. “So they silenced him.”