Ian Gibson reflects on García Lorca, eight decades since the poet’s 1936 execution by Franco’s police

Federico García Lorca, photographed in the 1930s. Photo: Marcelle Auclair.via El País
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• Re-release of Gibson’s full works on Lorca to coincide anniversary of death •

The world’s foremost scholar on the poet Federico García Lorca, Irish-born writer Ian Gibson, has told the Spanish newspaper El País that Lorca remains “the most famous missing person in the world,” nearly 80 years since the poet’s summary execution at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War.

In an interview this week, announcing that Gibson’s complete works on Lorca will be published this August to coincide with the anniversary of the Spanish poet’s death, Gibson talks of his interest as a young man in Lorca’s poetry and what later led him to investigate the poet’s execution by firing squad in the dead of night along with a local schoolmaster and two bullfighting assistants.

Gibson also laments the fact that some in Spain still prefer not to know the truth about how the writer died and says that while his earlier efforts to try and locate and exhume Lorca’s body were not successful, he welcomes ongoing work by independent teams to excavate in other locations where the poet’s remains are believed to be buried.

► Read the Interview at El País in Spanish or in English …

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