The 1929 Wall Street Crash appears in the account of Federico García Lorca’s time in the United States as a historical event he witnessed while living in New York. Its significance in this record is biographical: it places him in the city during the crash, without claiming a particular response or artistic consequence.

Lorca in New York

Lorca arrived in New York on 19 June 1929 after travelling through Paris, London, Lucton School near Ludlow, Oxford, and Southampton. He enrolled as a student of English at Columbia University and visited Harlem before spending the summer in Vermont and then returning to New York. The account states that he witnessed the Wall Street Crash during this period.

What the record establishes

The crash is mentioned alongside Lorca’s work on Poet in New York and his screenplay Trip to the Moon, written for silent cinema and inspired in part by a visit to Coney Island. The account does not say that the crash caused either work, describe how Lorca experienced it, or connect it to a specific change in his writing. It therefore serves as a marker of the historical setting of his New York years, rather than a documented turning point in his creative life.