Possible new search for Lorca’s remains
The Spanish historian Miguel Caballero Pérez claims to have new evidence pointing to the possible burial site of Federico García Lorca, the poet from Granada who was killed by the Nationalists in August 1937, the Guardian, El País and the Diario de Sevilla report. A much-publicized earlier attempt to locate his grave came up empty in December 2009. Giles Tremlett wrote in June:
Miguel Caballero Pérez spent three years sifting through police and military archives to piece together the last 13 hours of the life of the author of Blood Wedding, Yerma and The House of Bernarda Alba, … He now claims to have identified the half-dozen career policemen and volunteers who formed the firing squad that shot Lorca and three other prisoners, as well as the burial site. And he blames Lorca’s death on the long-running political and business rivalry between some of Granada’s wealthiest families – including his father’s own García clan. “I decided to research archive material rather than gather more oral testimony because that is where the existing confusion comes from – with so many supposed witnesses inventing things,” explained Caballero, who has published his results in a Spanish book called The Last 13 Hours of García Lorca. … That spot was said to be a trench dug by someone seeking water in an area of open countryside near a farm called Cortijo de Gazpacho, between the villages of Viznar and Alfacar. The zone is only half a kilometre from the spot identified by historian Ian Gibson in 1971 …
More here.
It’s unfortunate that the link to the rest of this article brings me to the original that is in Spanish, because my Spanish is not the best. From what I could gather from the article it seems that other people aren’t taking Caballero’s claim seriously. And who can really blame them? The search for Lorca’s remains has been a sort of treasure hunt for historians since his death. Other archeologist’s believe that Caballero’s evidence is really just conjecture. Again, my Spanish is not the nest and so I could have missed the point of the article, but from what I could gather Caballero is just another hopeful historian.
Yes, I also wish there were an English version of the original article. I have been a huge admirer of Lorca ever since having read Blood Wedding that captures the Spanish society in the 1930’s. I really wish I were fluent in Spanish so that I could understand the article further 🙁
[…] photograph above came from a post in The Volunteer, the Abraham Lincoln Brigade website, on new evidence as to the possible location of Lorca’s […]