Emerging from darkness, the mythic world of Federico García Lorca comes into being. The sound of horses on the wind, the endless flow of the fountain of tears (“Ainadamar“), and the trumpet call of wounded freedom, the aspiration and determination that have been denied generation after generation echo across the hills.

Teatro Solfs, Montevideo, Uruguay, April 1969. Little girls sing the opening ballad of Lorca’s play Mariana Pineda. The actress Margarita Xirgu looks back across 40 years since her premiere of this daring play. In the last minutes of the last day of her life, she tries to convey to her brilliant young student Nuria, the fire, the passion, and the hope of her generation that gave birth to the Spanish Republic. She flashes back to her first meeting with Lorca in a bar in Madrid. Lorca tells her that the freedom in his play is not only political freedom, and sings rhapsodically about the world of imagination, a world inspired when, as a child in Granada, he saw a statue of Mariana Pineda. Mariana was martyred in 1831 for sewing a revolutionary flag and refusing to reveal the names of the revolutionary leaders, including her lover. Her lover deserted her, and she wrote a serenely composed final letter to her children explaining her need to die with dignity. Margarita reflects on the parallel fates of Mariana and Federico. The reverie is shattered by the call of Ramon Ruiz Alonso, the Falangist who arrested Lorca in August, 1936.

The ballad of Mariana Pineda sounds again, taking Margarita back to the summer of 1936, the last time she saw Federico. The Spanish Civil War has begun; there are daily strikes and massacres. Margarita begs Federico to join her theater company’s tour of Mexico and Cuba. He will come later, he says, after he goes home to Granada for his birthday. No one knows the details of Lorca’s murder. Margarita has a vision of his final hour: Ruiz Alonso arresting Lorca and leading him to Ainadamar, the fountain of tears, with a bullfighter and a teacher. The three are made to confess their sins. Then they are shot. 2,137 people were murdered in Granada between July 26, 1936, and March 1, 1939. The death of Lorca was an early signal to the world.

For the third time we hear the ballad of Mariana Pineda. Once more the play is about to begin, the story retold for Margarita’s Latin American students. Margarita knows she is dying; she cannot make her entrance, others must go on. As her heart gives way, she tells Nuria that an individual actor’s voice may be silenced, but that the hope of a people will not die. Franco’s Fascists have ruled Spain for more than thirty years, never permitting Margarita Xirgu, the image of freedom, to return. Margarita has kept the plays of Lorca alive in Latin America while they were forbidden in Spain. The spirit of Lorca enters. He takes Margarita’s hand, and he takes Nuria’s hand. Together they enter a blazing sunset of delirious, visionary transformation. Margarita dies, offering her life to Mariana Pineda’s final lines: I am freedom. Her courage, clarity, and humanity are passed on to Nuria, her students, and the generations that follow. She sings, “I am the fountain from which you drink.” We drink deeply.