Law School

In 1916, after passing the common preparatory course for Arts and Law, Federico García Lorca enrolled at the University of Granada. Although at first he studied both degrees, later, after seeing the increasing difficulties in dealing with certain Arts subjects, he opted for Law, a career in which he graduated more by fortune with certain teachers than by application and perseverance. In this way he ended up pleasing his father who wanted Federico to become a lawyer.

The main entrance of the Law School (Facultad de Derecho) leads to the classrooms where García Lorca studied. The rear entrance, on Duquesa Street, was separated from the academic area and in 1936 incorporated the Gobierno Civil where Federico was taken after his arrest in the house of the Rosales family on August 16.

Federico’s law career advanced by fits and starts thanks to the “wangled passes” and the determination of Professor Viñuales, who went so far as to request the poet to grade himself.

As an Arts student, the professor who most influenced the poet, less for his use of the classes than for the complementary activities, was Martín Domínguez Berrueta, professor of Theory of Arts and Literature. Don Martín, influenced by the Free Teaching Institution, established a close relationship with his students at his house in Tinajilla Street, and organized a series of study trips from 1913 onwards that allowed Federico to visit Baeza and meet Machado or visit Castilla. They also visited different monuments in Granada, such as Santa Isabel la Real. However, the version given by Mora Guarnido of Martín Domínguez as a professor has nothing to do with the image of a man ahead of his time and a traveler. “Don Martín was nothing more than a parody of a professor. His cheap histrionics and his vanity pushed him to disproportionate and exalted attitudes, to hollow dithyrambs never strengthened by an exact criterion,” writes Mora in his memoirs. The experience served Lorca to gather material for his first book Impressions and Landscapes (1918).

.Federico’s stay at the University, already focused only on law, coincided with the academic renewal of the institution. One of the first young professors was Fernando de los Ríos, linked for family reasons to the Free Teaching Institution, who taught Constitutional Law, and Agustín Viñuales.

García Lorca’s career advanced by leaps and bounds thanks to the “wangled passes” in subjects such as Canon, Civil or Private Law and the determination of Professor Viñuales, who went so far as to request the poet to grade himself in the subject of Public Finance. Another of Federico’s bones of contention was Criminal Law, which he saved thanks to an impromptu answer he gave on the death penalty to Professor Antonio Mesa Moles.

The last stone he had to dodge was Commercial Law. The professor let it be known that since it was the year of his retirement, Federico’s exam would be the last of his professional life. Lorca presented himself in a special convocation, alone and without an audience. “He was passed,” says his brother Francisco, but he no longer wanted to “broach the subject of his studies.”