On 16 August 1936, when the former deputy Ramón Ruiz Alonso arrived at the Rosales house in Granada to arrest Federico García Lorca, he was accompanied by several men. One of them was Juan Luis Trescastro. A report by the Granada police from 1965, made public by Cadena SER and eldiario.es in 2015, names him among those who took part in the arrest. What made him notorious came later. According to testimonies collected by Lorca’s biographer Ian Gibson over decades of research, Trescastro boasted in the bars of Granada, in the days after the poet’s death, that he had been at the execution and had fired into Lorca’s body, adding a crude phrase that has been quoted ever since: that he had put two bullets in his backside “for being a queer”. The same 1965 police report, written within the regime itself, described Lorca as a socialist and freemason and attributed homosexual practices to him. Not every historian accepts Trescastro’s boast: the researcher Miguel Caballero, who has studied the last hours of the poet, considers it a bragging story and names other men as the shooters. Lorca was shot at dawn, most probably on 18 August 1936, on the road between Víznar and Alfacar.
// The theoryThe violence criminology did not see
For most of its history, criminology treated homosexuality as a form of deviance to be explained or controlled, and paid little attention to the violence directed at gay people. Queer criminology, developed in the last two decades by researchers such as Matthew Ball, Carrie Buist, Emily Lenning and Jordan Blair Woods, reversed that perspective: it studies how criminal law, police and courts have persecuted sexual and gender minorities, and how violence against them has been ignored, minimized or justified. Research on hate crime, especially the work of Barbara Perry, adds a crucial idea: hate violence is not only an attack on an individual but a message to an entire group, a way of “doing difference” that reinforces a social hierarchy. In the case of Lorca, these perspectives ask a precise question: what role did homophobia play in the decision to kill him, and why was that role so often left out of the story?
Political, personal, or both
The causes of Lorca’s murder have been debated for decades. One line of explanation emphasizes politics: he was a famous progressive intellectual in a city where the uprising was killing Republicans by the hundred. Another emphasizes local rivalries: feuds between families of the Granada plain, envy and old accounts. A third emphasizes homophobia: Lorca’s homosexuality was known, and for his killers it was part of what made him an enemy. Queer criminology does not require choosing one: hate crimes are often committed by people with several motives at once, and the identity of the victim shapes how the violence is carried out and how it is celebrated. Trescastro’s boast, whether true or invented, is evidence of something important: in Granada in 1936, a man thought he could gain prestige by saying he had shot a poet for being homosexual.
// The subjectWhat is documented and what is said
About Trescastro, three levels must be kept apart. Documented: he took part in the arrest, as the 1965 police report states. Testified: according to witnesses gathered by Gibson, he boasted publicly of having been at the execution and of having shot Lorca, with the phrase that has been repeated ever since. Disputed: whether he actually fired; Miguel Caballero considers the boast empty and attributes the shots to others. Trescastro was never tried. Like the other men involved in Lorca’s death, he lived the rest of his life under a regime that had no interest in examining what had happened. What survives of him is a name in a police report and a sentence repeated in bars.
Juan Luis Trescastro
Get the map of theories for free
Subscribe to the criminal archive —one case a week, no spam— and I'll send you The map of theories: the great currents of criminology on a single sheet.
// The crackA boast is not a confession
A case about a real person must not turn a reported boast into a proven fact. Trescastro’s participation in the arrest is documented; his participation in the shooting rests on his own words, reported by others, and is contested. The criminological reading does not depend on resolving that question, because what it analyses is the meaning of the phrase as much as the act. Queer criminology has also been criticized for reading homophobia into every case where the victim was gay; in Lorca’s case, political and personal motives were real too, and the most careful historians weigh them together.
There is also the matter of how the story has been told. For decades, official versions and part of the historiography preferred to present Lorca’s death as a political tragedy, or even an uncontrolled excess, and to leave his homosexuality in the background. La bola negra (2026), the film by Los Javis inspired by an unfinished work by Lorca, puts the persecution of gay men at the center of its story; Trescastro is part of the history it evokes, not of its fictional plot. Explaining is not excusing. Whatever Trescastro did with his hands, he chose to celebrate a murder by naming the victim’s sexuality as the reason.
Naming the motive
The recognition of homophobic violence as hate crime is recent. In Spain, the Penal Code of 1995 introduced aggravating circumstances for crimes motivated by the victim’s sexual orientation, and in the following decades police and prosecutors created specialized units for hate crimes. Historical memory has followed a similar path: the persecution of gay people under the dictatorship was not acknowledged by law until the twenty-first century. Naming the motive matters because it changes how a crime is understood and remembered. Lorca was killed for several reasons at once. One of them was who he loved, and the man who boasted about it said so out loud.
Three key ideas
- Queer criminology (Ball, Buist and Lenning, Woods) studies the persecution of sexual minorities and the violence against them that criminology long ignored; hate crime research (Perry, 2001) shows that such violence is a message to an entire group.
- Juan Luis Trescastro took part in the arrest of Lorca on 16 August 1936, as a 1965 police report records. According to testimonies gathered by Ian Gibson, he later boasted of having shot the poet for being homosexual; Miguel Caballero considers it bragging and names other shooters.
- The crack: a reported boast is not a proven fact, and Lorca’s death had political and personal motives too. Even so, celebrating a murder for the victim’s sexuality was his choice.
Sources · further reading
- Gibson, I. (1979). Granada en 1936 y el asesinato de Federico García Lorca. Crítica.
- Caballero Pérez, M. (2011). Las trece últimas horas en la vida de García Lorca. La Esfera de los Libros.
- Perry, B. (2001). In the Name of Hate: Understanding Hate Crimes. Routledge.
- Buist, C. L. and Lenning, E. (2016). Queer Criminology. Routledge.
- Barcala, D. (2015, April 23). “Quién es quién en los documentos que prueban el asesinato de Lorca”. eldiario.es. https://www.eldiario.es/sociedad/documentos-prueban-asesinato-lorca_1_2705078.html
Case-file questionsFrequently asked questions
Who is Juan Luis Trescastro?
Juan Luis Trescastro is a villain from The Black Ball, analysed on KRIMINIS through the lens of criminology. Witnesses remembered him in the bars, days later, telling people he had been there.
Why does Juan Luis Trescastro become a villain?
Juan Luis Trescastro and queer criminology: he took part in the arrest of Federico García Lorca in August 1936 and, according to the testimonies gathered by Ian Gibson, later boasted of having shot him for being homosexual. Other historians believe it was empty bragging. Queer criminology asks what place homophobia had in the violence, and why for decades people preferred not to see it. The real history behind La bola negra.
Which criminological theory explains Juan Luis Trescastro?
Juan Luis Trescastro's case is analysed through Queer criminology. Queer criminology (Ball, Buist and Lenning, Woods) studies how sexual orientation and gender identity have been the target of penal persecution and violence, and how criminology itself has ignored it. Research on hate crime (Perry) adds that such violence sends a message to an entire group. Juan Luis Trescastro took part on 16 August 1936 in the arrest of Lorca, as a 1965 police report records, and according to testimonies collected by Ian Gibson he later boasted of having shot the poet because of his homosexuality. Whether he did it or only said it is disputed. That he said it, and that his words were repeated for decades, is part of the history.
