English and the World · Spain · 7 · Granada · A1–C2 · A1–A2 free
A village on the plain, a summer house among the orchards, a festival of deep song in the Alhambra, and the summer of 1936. The city of Spain’s best-loved poet. Choose your level.
Fuente Vaqueros and Granada
Federico García Lorca was born in 1898 in Fuente Vaqueros, a village on the green plain near Granada, called the Vega. His father was a farmer, and his mother was a teacher.
Federico loved music, so he learned to play the piano. He wanted to be a musician, but later he became a writer. He wrote poems and plays, and he also drew pictures.
Every summer, his family stayed in a white house with a garden, the Huerta de San Vicente, because it was cool and quiet. Federico wrote there. Today the house is a museum, and you can see his piano and his desk.
From Granada to the world
Lorca became very famous in Spain and in Latin America. His poems are full of colours, the moon, horses and the people of Andalusia. He loved flamenco, so in 1922 he helped to organise a big flamenco competition in the Alhambra.
In 1936 a civil war started in Spain. In August, men from the Nationalist side arrested Lorca in Granada and killed him near the village of Víznar. He was only 38. Nobody knows where his body is, because it was never found.
Today, people all over the world read his poems and see his plays.
🦉 Want more? Sophia explains and, but, so, because and many more joining words in Joining the Pieces (Philo & Sophia, Lesson 11).
Language: and, but, so, because
| Word | Use | Example |
|---|---|---|
| and | adds information | He wrote poems and plays. |
| but | a contrast, a surprise | He wanted to be a musician, but he became a writer. |
| so | a result | He loved music, so he learned the piano. |
| because | a reason | They stayed there because it was cool. |
⚠️ so gives the result, because gives the reason: It was hot, so they went to the Huerta. = They went to the Huerta because it was hot.
Read the texts first. Press “Check my answers” at the end.
Choose the best answer.
1. Where was Lorca born?
2. What did Lorca first want to be?
3. What is the Huerta de San Vicente today?
4. What happened in 1922?
Write and, but, so or because.
5. He wrote poems plays.
6. He wanted to be a musician, he became a writer.
7. He loved flamenco, he helped to organise a competition.
8. The family went to the Huerta it was cool and quiet.
Choose the best answer.
9. “It was very hot in the city, ___ they went to the Huerta.”
10. “Nobody knows where his body is, ___ it was never found.”
11. “His poems are short, ___ they are very powerful.”
12. “I want to read Lorca in Spanish, ___ I’m learning the language.”
Go there!
Visit: the Huerta de San Vicente, in the García Lorca Park in Granada (book a guided visit) → the Centro Federico García Lorca in the city centre → Fuente Vaqueros, about 20 km away, to see the house where he was born. Check the opening times before you go.
Your task: write six sentences about a famous person you like, using and, but, so and because.
It follows Lorca from the Vega to Madrid and back: Dalí and Buñuel, Falla and the Cante Jondo competition in the Alhambra, the Gypsy Ballads and the duende, the summer of 1936 at the Huerta de San Vicente, his arrest and death, and how Granada has remembered him, with grammar, practice, etymology and a visit plan.
The A1–A2 version above is free for everyone.
It follows Lorca from the Vega to Madrid and back: Dalí and Buñuel, Falla and the Cante Jondo competition in the Alhambra, the Gypsy Ballads and the duende, the summer of 1936 at the Huerta de San Vicente, his arrest and death, and how Granada has remembered him, with grammar, practice, etymology and a visit plan.
The A1–A2 version above is free for everyone.