FUNDING DRIES UP ON SEARCH FOR LORCA’S GRAVE

News

Staff Reporter / 2011-01-05 14:18:54

As the Regional Government of Andalusia withdraw funding for the dig which has been searching for some time now for the grave of Federico García Lorca it seems as though Spains most famous poet, at least for a few years more, will continue also to be the country’s most famous missing person.

Shot and buried in a mass grave during the Spanish Civil war not a single bone has yet been found. “Not even a splinter” said Francisco Carrión, head of the team digging in Alfacar, near Granada, this in a statement made over a year ago after his team had spent two months searching for the body of Francisco Galadí, a bullfighter who was thought to lie in the same grave.

Now, 73 years after the execution, following an investment of over 70,000 euro, the plug on funding is about to be pulled.

However, hispanist Ian Gibson, who is working on the dig and who has spent 45 years studying Lorca, says that he is not giving up. "I feel sick. I think about this all day long. I fear for my mental health," he told the Spanish press.

The family of Francisco Galadí also feels the same way as does the adopted daughter, Nieves García, of another man supposedly buried in the same grave.

"Now is not the right time. There are other graves to open, other executed people to find. But I do want them to look for my grandfather again in future," says the matador's grandson, also named Francisco. "The fact that they were not found at the excavation spot was a huge letdown after waiting for so many years. But he's got to be there, maybe only 15 or 20 metres away..."

"If the Popular Party wins the next elections, it will do nothing to look for Lorca," adds Gibson, arguing that the PP still wants to prevent the country from examining the "holocaust" that took place in Spain. "I am 71 years old. And the failure of this search will pain me to my death."