gallo, no.1

Gallo’s first issue, though dated in February, appeared in bookstores on March 9, 1928. It was printed in the Paulino Ventura Traveset printing house, a family business founded in 1835, located on 52 Mesones de Granada St. Federico García Lorca had had his first book, Impresiones y paisajes, (an edition paid for by his father), printed there in 1918.

The quotation that preceded the contents of the first issue of the journal, two verses of Lucretius' De Rerum Natura, marked from the beginning its combative tone: “noenu queunt rabidi contra constare leones / inque tueri: ita continuo meminere fugai,” ("the raving lions dare not face and gaze upon the cock/ and thus lions straightaway bethink themselves of flight”). That is to say, gallo confronted and challenged its potential enemies from the start.

On March 8, the day before the journal was distributed, a luncheon was held for friends and colleagues of gallo in Venta Eritaña, on a mountain road outside of Granada. Garcia Lorca summarized the efforts they had made in the publication of the journal, while calling attention to some fundamental ideas that would guide their work. He said: "Five or six times this journal was about to be published. Five or six times it had wanted to fly. But at last, it is among us – alive - and wanting to live for a long time, and still smelling of the printer's ink ...

A journal from Granada, but for the outside world, a journal that will listen to the universal heartbeat to better understand its own: a journal as cheerful, lively, non-provincial, and cosmopolitan as Granada itself.”

Salvador Dalí illustrated the issue. Federico García Lorca, Jorge Guillén, Melchor Fernández Almagro, José Bergamín, Dalí, Manuel López Banús, and Enrique Gómez Arboleya contributed works. It also included a notes section with a tribute to Manuel Ángeles Ortiz and Ismael G. de la Serna, two painters from Granada who were members of the School of Paris.

A few weeks after its distribution, a pamphlet entitled Pavo (Turkey) appeared in Granada. It was devoted entirely to parody and belittle the contents of gallo. An acrostic that García Lorca - the author of the majority of the texts included in the pamphlet - handwrote in the copies he sent to his friends revealed who was behind Pavo: " P/ a/ v/ o/ e/ s/ t/ a/ h/ e/ Ch/ o/ p/ o/ R/ l/ A/ r/ e/ d/ A/ c/ c/ i/ o/ n/ D/ e/ l/ g/ A/ l/ l/ o.” (Pavo is the work of the editors of the Gallo).