It should be noted that Lorca's critics have established links between the humanist thought of Fernando de los Ríos and some passages in “Poeta en Nueva York”. As Miguel Angel Garcia points out, there are numerous similarities or points of contact between the law professor’s moderate liberal humanist ethical socialism on the one hand and some forms of Lorca's protest on the other— but there are also points of dissent:
“The numerous convergences, more than influences or traces, of the political and religious thought of Fernando de los Ríos with Lorca's poetic thought that show those texts or passages of ‘Poeta en Nueva York’ that are closer to social denunciation, more critical of capitalism. Professor and poet coincide when they wield their disagreement towards what they see from a humanist and ethical conscience based on firmly liberal class positions, although sometimes the latter, far from the always moderate attitude of the former, cries out with a subversive voice as one more of the oppressed, the exploited and the weak with whom he has always been.”
(García, 2024: 268).
Fernando de los Ríos, who in 1918 had joined the Socialist Party after the proclamation of the Republic, became Minister of Justice and in December 1931 moved to the Ministry of Public Instruction, during which he made possible the famous theater group “La Barraca”, of which García Lorca and Eduardo Ugarte were directors.
After the Civil War, De los Ríos was purged by the dictatorship, but he continued his teaching work at the New School for Social Research in New York and was part of the government in exile as Minister of State of the Republican government in exile until shortly before his death in 1949.
As can be seen through this journey, the friendship that Federico García Lorca maintained with Fernando de los Ríos was key both for the life and poetic trajectory of Granada’s famous writer and the literary and intellectual networks which he navigated throughout his life.
las numerosas convergencias –más que influencias o huellas– del pensamiento político y religioso de Fernando de los Ríos con el pensamiento poético lorquiano que transparentan aquellos textos o pasajes de Poeta en Nueva York más próximos a la denuncia social, más críticos con el capitalismo. Profesor y poeta coinciden cuando esgrimen su desacuerdo hacia lo que ven desde una conciencia humanista y ética asentada en posiciones de clase firmemente liberales, aunque a veces el segundo, lejos de la actitud siempre moderada del primero, clama con voz subversiva como uno más de los oprimidos, los explotados y los débiles junto a los que siempre estuvo (García, 2024: 268).