Police report on murder of Garcia Lorca comes to light

ANY doubts over the fate of Federico Garcia Lorca, one of Spain’s greatest writers, came a step closer to being cleared up this week with the release of a police document related to his execution.

The details of the report have been released by Cadena Ser radio. Written in 1965, 29 years after the poet and playwriter was murdered during the Civil War in 1936, the police detail Garcia Lorca’s ‘crimes’ – being a ‘socialist,’ ‘a freemason’ and involved in ‘homosexual and abnormal practices’ – and claim he “confessed” before being put to death.

Although it’s long been believed that Garcia Lorca was murdered by official nationalist forces, obfuscation from the Francoist regime suggesting that he was killed in a street fight has never until now been officially contradicted.

But the report, recounts his arrest in Granada and how he was taken, alongside another unnamed detainee, to the ‘vicinity of the place known as Fuente Grande.’ He was then ‘shot after having confessed, and was buried in that location, in a very shallow grave, in a ravine.’

While the report doesn’t clarify the final burial place, saying that it is “very difficult to find,” Garcia Lorca’s biographer Ian Gibson highlighted its importance. He told El Pais: “It demonstrates that it was not a street killing, that he was taken out by the civil government to be murdered. They themselves say it.”