José María Hinojosa

José María Hinojosa Lasarte was a Spanish writer and political militant. As a man of letters he is considered one of the first if not the very first and the only genuinely surrealist poet in Spain, counted also among members of Generation ‘27. Following an alleged visit to the Soviet Union, he shifted, to the shock and horror of his surrealist colleagues, from Stalinism towards Carlism, the Catholic Church in Spain, and the Agrarian Party. These beliefs made him highly sceptical of the Second Spanish Republic when it was declared in 1931 and ultimately caused him to fall victim to the Red Terror by the Republican faction during the subsequent Spanish Civil War. Following more than half a century of oblivion, his memory and especially the circumstances of his abduction and murder have become a counter-reference in politically-charged discussions about the similar murder of fellow poet Federico García Lorca during the White Terror.