Jon Clarke (Publisher & Editor)
HE is the most famous murdered poet in history.
Yet, the mystery of where Federico Garcia Lorca’s body was buried has continued for over half a century.
Now investigators may, once again, kick start the search for him, based on a bone found in a park near Granada in 1986.
The celebrated Blood Wedding writer was killed by fascists at the beginning of the Spanish civil war, in August, 1936.
The homosexual scribe was seized at his home in Granada and later shot alongside three fellow Republicans and dumped in a yet-to-be-identified communal grave.
Now the granddaughter of one of those killed – teacher Dioscoro Galinda – has filed an official request to a Granada court to reopen the investigation into their whereabouts.
READ MORE:
“Spanish society has not yet had the opportunity to bury its most famous Andalucian,” insisted Nieves García Catalan in her request.
She based her demands on the recent claims of former Granada Public Works boss Jose Antonio Valdivia, who hinted that a bone found in the village of Alfacar could have been from Lorca.
A long time investigation, which led to digs in three separate locations in 2009, 2014 and 2016, came to a standstill soon after the PP took control of the Junta in 2018.
The new demand also includes evidence from celebrated Irish historian Sir Ian Gibson, who has long insisted Lorca was buried in Alfacar.
This week, he told the Olive Press: “It’s about time they carried on with this search. It is abhorrent that Spain’s most famous playwright and poet is still buried in an unmarked grave.”
The Madrid-based writer has written various books on the case and believes that the group were buried by a specific olive tree in Alfacar, before being dug up and later moved.
“We believe they are buried under an ornamental fountain, which was due to be dug up, until the PP government got into the Junta in 2018.
“This denuncia should hopefully get things moving again and I am fully prepared to give evidence as an expert,” he added.
In the court request, seen by the Olive Press, the family asks for the official Guardia Civil ‘service sheets’ in Granada and Alfacar from August 18 to 20, 1936, when Lorca was executed.
It also requests official police files on execution orders, anything on the exhumation of the poet and the registration of the transfer of his remains.
It also asks for any evidence of those killed around that time by the Red Cross.
The other two Republicans killed alongside Lorca were bullfighters Francisco Galadí and Joaquín Arcollas.
The excellent hispanist Ian Gibson is surely not an “expat”. He’s perhaps better classed as an immigrant as he acquired Spanish citizenship in 1984. He is an accomplished and award winning writer and author in the Spanish language and he has also written many interesting pieces for Spanish mainstream newspapers, e.g. El Pais. He appears on Spanish TV, for example on chat shows, e.g. Late Motiv. Back in October he was interviewed by Sexta TV on the occasion of the removal of Franco’s remains from the Valle de los Caidos. He is most definitely NOT “Sir” Ian as he has never been a subject of the British crown and the British monarch has not bestowed a knighthood upon him.