Grave of murdered Spanish poet remains unknown

Grave of murdered Spanish poet remains unknown

The body of Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca remains missing after a high-profile excavation in southern Spain failed to find human remains.

Garcia Lorca was executed in 1936 at the start of the Spanish Civil War and his killing became a symbol of General Francisco Franco\’s brutal regime.

Local authorities had ordered excavation of a hillside near Granada believed for decades to be a gravesite for execution victims.

It was the site that Manuel Castilla, a Franco supporter who claimed he had helped to bury Garcia Lorca, had pointed out to Irish historian Ian Gibson in 1966.

But no remains of human bones have been found, according to a report by archeologists from the University of Granada.

Work crews dug down 40 centimetres and then hit rock, reports said.

Garcia Lorca was an acclaimed poet and playwright who penned Blood Wedding, Poet in New York and Gypsy Ballads.

He was captured in August 1936 and shot for his suspected leftist sympathies, along with a teacher and two anarchists. More than 100,000 people went missing during the 1936-39 civil war.

Efforts to find where he was buried were delayed by 40 years of Franco\’s dictatorship and Spain\’s uneasy transition to democracy.

The poet\’s family had opposed the excavations but the families of other people believed to have been killed with him had supported efforts to find the bodies.
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