The relatives of poet Federico García Lorca, who was executed by fascists in the early morning hours of August 18, 1936, during the Spanish Civil War, recently agreed to allow authorities to excavate the mass grave, located in a village near Granada, Spain, where he is believed to be buried. Relatives of two other men buried with Lorca—a teacher and a bullfighter—have long wanted their loved ones exhumed so that they can be buried properly, but the poet's family has preferred the site remain undisturbed so that Lorca wasn't seen as more important than other victims who may be in nearby graves.
A niece of the poet, who spoke for five other family members, told CNN earlier today that they would not try to block a judge's recent orders to remove the remains. Lorca, the author of a dozen poetry collections, including Poet in New York, which was first published in English by Norton in 1940, was thirty-eight when he was killed.
