Ian Gibson urges Sánchez to locate Lorca's remains

Ian Gibson pressures Sánchez: Lorca's body as unfinished business

At 87 and with a new diary under his arm, Hispanist Ian Gibson has returned to the fray. His book 'No me encontraron' ('They Did Not Find Me') recounts decades of fruitless searching, and in an interview with El País he has thrown down the gauntlet to the Spanish Prime Minister: "A government that removed Franco from the Valley of the Fallen would do well to keep searching for Lorca's body." Far from uniting opinion, the request has peine a trench war over the poet, his memory and the business of his disappearance.

The mystery that never closes

Since 1936, the exact whereabouts of Federico García Lorca's body has been one of the black holes of the Spanish Civil War. He was executed in Víznar, but no excavation has found his bones. The official version points to a mass grave; however, a theory sustained over the years holds that the family secretly recovered the body and buried it on private property. That theory, repeated in the debate, would explain the lack of cooperation from the poet's descendants –conservative-leaning– and their refusal to authorise surveys. "The family knows where he is and won't say because it suits them," argue those who see a financial interest behind the perpetual copyright.

From cultural narrative to the business of the disappeared

Lorca's figure generates a constant flow of income: publishing rights, tourism, subsidies. Gibson has built a career around his figure, which has earned him accusations of being a "freeloader" and a "parasite". The Hispanist himself acknowledges an obsession in his diary: "If I don't get him out, I rot inside." But the economic backdrop is unavoidable. A hypothetical location of the body would boost its symbolic value and, therefore, its commercial return. Some argue the real stumbling block is not a lack of resources but a conflict of interest: "If the remains appear, the family loses control of the narrative," they point out.

Politics as the backdrop

Gibson's request comes at a time of wear for Sánchez's government, tainted by court cases. The parallel with Franco's exhumation –an operation that cost millions and divided society– is inevitable. For some, searching for Lorca would be consistent with democratic memory policy; for others, a smokescreen. "It's to keep half the country digging while they put Begoña on trial," one sector of commentators quips. The polarisation goes beyond culture and lands on public spending management: how much would a mass search in Granada cost, and who would pay for it?

Broken consensus, open wound

The debate shows that the Lorca case is not archaeology but politics with a shovel. While Gibson waits for an answer from Moncloa (the Prime Minister's office), the family remains silent and the opposition attacks what it calls a "sectarian obsession". The only certainty is that, 90 years on, no one has moved a grain of sand to solve the enigma. Perhaps, as some analysts suggest, the body will never appear because it is already where it always was: in the hands of those who do not want it found.