Spanish poet Lorca to be exhumed
Updated on 28 October 2009
The remains of Federico Garcia Lorca, who was killed at the beginning of the Spanish civil war, are to be exhumed this week. Joanna Simpson talks to the poet's niece.
Archaeologists have begun excavations at the site where Spain's most famous poet is thought to lie.
But by exhuming the grave believed to hold the remains of Federico Garcia Lorca, they are unearthing not just human remains, but also difficult memories for the Spanish people.
Lorca was one of the first to be killed by nationalists after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936. Three years later General Franco had taken power and Lorca's work was banned.
In 1953 the 'Caudillo' allowed a heavily edited version of his work to be published and by the late 1970s, his writing and his story had become well known in Spain and across the world.
The poet and playwright came to represent the tens of thousands of Republicans who had died during the war and the ensuing dictatorship.
"Upsetting and unnecessary"
In its transition to democracy, Spain also agreed to leave the past where it was. There were no war crimes tribunals.
So the exhumation of part of a mass grave believed to hold one of the figureheads of the Spanish fight for democracy raises difficult questions.
Lorca's descendants have also opposed the move to excavate the site just outside the Andalucía city of Granada.
The Andalucía government only allowed the dig to go ahead after it received applications from the families of others killed at the same time and in the same place as Lorca.
The poet's niece and president of the Federico Garcia Lorca Foundation in Madrid told More4 News, "Of all the deaths in the civil war, all the assassinations, it is the most documented, the best known.
"We have never felt the need or the desire to exhume Lorca's remains. We have considered that his grave. The fact of knowing exactly where they are, of seeing the remains, for us is unsettling and unnecessary. Especially since his death has been so studied and investigated.
"We would have preferred that the fact that he is there, among all the other victims, that that would have, and in the end has, served to protect the place as a sacred ground. That his presence there helped to remember all the victims, that he there is just one among all the victims.
"The fact that it is being done is now inevitable and what we ask for is respect and discretion and that this not be made a spectacle."
National unity
But some feel that such digs are crucial and that Spain has to confront its past.
Santiago Macias co-founded the Historic Memory Association in 2000 after helping a friend recover the body of his grandfather, killed during the Civil War. Since then he has helped exhume around 1,500 bodies for families across Spain.
"I believe those who defended democracy in this country can't remain lying in a ditch when we are living in a democracy.
It seems to me that it is incompatible from both a political and a human point of view." He denies that exhuming the bodies of the Republican dead is an affront to Spanish national unity, as some on the right claim.
"I don't know how this could be interpreted as threatening the unity of Spain. To me that is not credible. In this country they do too much to protect the killers."
"Worse than dogs"
One family that have had their relative exhumed is grateful for the closure Santiago has helped to bring them.
Josefina Cordal, 82, was only nine when her brother was shot dead in Galicia, on the north west coast, during the early days of the Civil War. Locals told her that Castor Cordal, her electrician brother who was a member of an anarchist trade union, had been buried in the local churchyard.
Now she has been able to say goodbye to him. On seeing his skeleton, she wept, asking her brother: "Why? Why did they kill you my brother? Why?"
Her anger has not faded in 73 years. "Here they are. Here they are, worse than dogs, worse than dogs. This is what they did in Spain in the Civil War.
"This is what Senor Franco did. El Senor Caudillo that we had. This is what he did. Assassinate not dogs, but people".
But she is also happy, "because I am beside my brother.
"And I feel happy because I was always talking about him. I used to come past here, by the road, and so many times I came past and said, "where is my brother?" In peace my brother rests. In peace."
But while Josefina's family have finally laid their relative to rest, for thousands more in Spain, their questions remain unanswered.
The authorities say the excavations of the graves near Granada, between the Andalucía villages of Viznar and Alfacar, will go on for at least a month. And after that, Spaniards may have a better idea of what happened to Lorca and where he lies.
But they will also once more have to cast their minds back to a difficult period in history many would prefer to forget.
