Ramón Ruiz Alonso was born in 1903 in Villaflores, in the province of Salamanca, and worked as a typographer. He became active in Catholic and right-wing politics and, in the elections of 1933, was elected deputy for Granada for the CEDA, the main right-wing party of the Second Republic, presenting himself as a worker on the right. When the military uprising took control of Granada in July 1936, Federico García Lorca, who had arrived from Madrid to spend the summer with his family, sought refuge in the house of his friends the Rosales, a family of known Falangists, in the center of the city. On the afternoon of 16 August 1936, Ruiz Alonso arrived at the house with guards and, despite the protests of the family, took the poet to the civil government building. According to the research of Lorca’s biographer Ian Gibson, it was Ruiz Alonso who had filed the denunciation against him (something he always denied), and Gibson collected testimony that he justified the arrest by saying that Lorca had done more harm with his pen than others with a pistol. A Granada police report from 1965, made public in 2015, places him at the head of the group that insisted on finding and arresting the poet. Two days later Lorca was shot.
// The theoryWho defines the enemy
Labelling theory, from Frank Tannenbaum and Edwin Lemert to Howard Becker’s Outsiders (1963), shifted attention from the acts of deviants to the people who define them. Becker’s “moral entrepreneurs” create and enforce rules, and the label they apply—criminal, degenerate, enemy—shapes how everyone else treats the person who bears it. In ordinary times the consequences are stigma and exclusion. In times of political violence they can be death. The historian Robert Gellately, studying the Gestapo, showed that much of its work depended on denunciations from ordinary citizens, often driven by personal motives. Political scientist Stathis Kalyvas, in The Logic of Violence in Civil War (2006), argued that violence in civil wars is often “jointly produced”: armed authorities need local informers, and informers use the authorities to settle their own accounts. A denunciation is the moment when a label becomes a weapon.
The label as a weapon
In the Granada of August 1936, the label that mattered was “red”: an enemy of the uprising, and therefore someone who could be arrested and shot without trial. Lorca had never been a member of any party, but he was a famous, progressive intellectual, a friend of Republican politicians, and a homosexual in a city that knew it. Those characteristics could be assembled into a label. The denunciation did precisely that: it presented him to the authorities as a dangerous enemy, which was what made his arrest and his death possible. In Becker’s terms, the act that defined Lorca as deviant was not anything he did, but the application of a label by someone with access to power. In Kalyvas’s terms, it was the local link in a chain of violence that the authorities alone could not have completed.
// The subjectA man who was never tried
Ruiz Alonso never faced a court for his role in Lorca’s death. During the dictatorship his involvement became an uncomfortable matter even for the regime, which was keen to blur its responsibility for the death of the most famous Spanish poet; according to his biography, Dionisio Ridruejo removed him from the regime’s propaganda service because of it, and he never held an important post again. In the mid-1970s he emigrated to the United States, and he died there in 1978. Like many others in the Spanish transition, he died without the facts ever being examined by a judge. What is known about him comes from historians, testimonies and documents, and that is the limit of what can be said.
Ramón Ruiz Alonso
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// The crackLabelling explains the mechanism, not the motive
Labelling theory explains how a denunciation turns a person into a target. It explains less about why Ruiz Alonso did it. Historians have proposed several reasons: political hatred of a progressive intellectual, the resentment of a man who had risen from humble origins among an elite that looked down on him, rivalry with the Rosales family, and the homophobia of the time. None of these can be proven, and attributing a motive to a real person requires more caution than the theory offers. Labelling also risks treating Lorca as a passive object of others’ definitions; he was a writer who knew exactly the danger he was in and chose to return to Granada.
There is also the film. La bola negra (2026) is a work of fiction that evokes Lorca’s world; Ruiz Alonso is part of the history it presupposes, not, as far as the published synopsis shows, of its plot. Explaining is not excusing. Ruiz Alonso chose to go to the Rosales house and take the poet away. What labeling theory adds is that in a war, the people who decide who is an enemy share responsibility with those who pull the trigger.
Denunciation in civil wars
Studies of civil wars from Spain to the Balkans and Latin America have documented the central role of denunciation in political violence: neighbors, colleagues and rivals who report others to armed authorities, sometimes out of conviction and often out of personal interest. Kalyvas’s research suggests that a large part of the killing in civil wars depends on that local information. The lesson is uncomfortable: mass violence needs not only soldiers and commanders, but ordinary people willing to point. Lorca’s arrest is the most famous case in Spanish history. It was not the only one.
Three key ideas
- Labelling theory (Tannenbaum, Lemert, Becker, 1963) holds that deviance is defined by those with power to label. In civil wars, denunciation turns the label into a weapon: violence is “jointly produced” by authorities and local informers (Kalyvas, 2006).
- Ramón Ruiz Alonso, a typographer and former CEDA deputy for Granada, led the arrest of Lorca at the Rosales house on 16 August 1936; according to Gibson’s research he denounced him, and a 1965 police report places him at the head of the group that sought him. He was never tried and died in the United States in 1978.
- The crack: the theory explains the mechanism, not the motive, which historians still debate. Even so, going to the Rosales house to take the poet away was his choice.
Sources · further reading
- Gibson, I. (1979). Granada en 1936 y el asesinato de Federico García Lorca. Crítica.
- Becker, H. S. (1963). Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. Free Press.
- Kalyvas, S. N. (2006). The Logic of Violence in Civil War. Cambridge University Press.
- Gellately, R. (1990). The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy, 1933-1945. Oxford University Press.
- Gibson, I. (2007). El hombre que detuvo a García Lorca: Ramón Ruiz Alonso y la muerte del poeta. Aguilar.
- 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 Ramón Ruiz Alonso?
Ramón Ruiz Alonso (“Exdiputado de la CEDA”) is a villain from The Black Ball, analysed on KRIMINIS through the lens of criminology. Lorca had taken refuge in the house of a Falangist family, convinced that nobody would touch him there.
Why does Ramón Ruiz Alonso (Former CEDA deputy) become a villain?
Ramón Ruiz Alonso and labeling: the typographer who became a CEDA deputy for Granada led the arrest of Federico García Lorca at the Rosales house on 16 August 1936 and, according to Ian Gibson’s research, denounced him. Howard Becker explained that deviance is created by those who have the power to label others. In the summer of 1936, in Granada, a label could be a death sentence. The real history behind La bola negra.
Which criminological theory explains Ramón Ruiz Alonso?
Ramón Ruiz Alonso's case is analysed through Labeling. Labelling theory (Tannenbaum, Lemert, Becker) holds that deviance lies not in acts but in the reaction of those who have the power to define others as deviant. In civil wars, denunciation is its deadliest form: an accusation before the authorities turns a person into an enemy, and the enemy can be eliminated. Ramón Ruiz Alonso (1903-1978), a former CEDA deputy, led the arrest of Lorca on 16 August 1936 and, according to Ian Gibson’s research, was the one who denounced him to the civil government. He was never tried. This case sticks to what is documented and separates facts from versions.
