the word Canco appears in the poem by Federico García Lorca “Oda a Walt Whitman” ending with a series of words, or rather insults, we supposed used to point gay men of the time: “Faeries de Norteamérica, pájaros de la Habana, jotos de Méjico, sarasas de Cádiz, apios de Sevilla, cancos de Madrid, floras de Alicante, adelaidas de Portugal”.
Previously we found the term in a text by Pío Baroja, a writer with an interesting biography, of the previous Generation of ‘98. In one of the 8 volumes that compose “Desde la última vuelta del camino” entitled “Final de siglo XIX y principios del XX”, there is a conversation between two characters in the book, the word Canco is used, although of the context can not be deduced exactly its meaning. Scholars of the work of Pío Baroja say that the meaning of Canco in this text is stupid, gullible, etc.
Years later, in the poem of Lorca, it appears as a synonym for faggot. So, the term Canco would be another case in which there has been a semantic leap of the negative characteristics of some men to gay men, by the mere fact of being, as it has happened with other words such as Palomo and Pato.
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