‘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, a professional mourner loosely based on the…