Garcia Lorca may be exhumed

Lorca was one of the more famous victims of the civil war that brought Dictator Franco to power. But Lorca did not die alone�with him were a number of other republicans including this school teacher. They were all shot but their bodies were never found. This week the daughter of the teacher went to court to have public records regarding her father’s death released. She says she only wants to be able to rescue the remains of her loved one, and doesn’t care about further action. Across Spain, tens of thousands of Franco’s victims lie in unmarked graves and there’s never been an effort to find them until Spain’s socialist government last year passed a law of historical memory which officially acknowledged Franco’s regime crimes for the first time. It also directs Spain’s public institutions to open their records to the surviving family members of the victims. But Spain’s conservative right argues that this won’t help anyone. The leader of the Popular Party says that all Spaniards agreed to look to the future according to the constitution, so he’s against opening old wounds. Spain’s constitution was made on an agreement of forgetting. Conservatives feel the new law violated that agreement. but the conservatives have a lingering problem in the valley of the fallen, a huge monument dedicated mainly to Franco’s supported who fell in the war which was built mainly by captured republicans. What’s stoking the flames now is a federal judge who wants to create a national census of Franco’s victims and a decision by Lorca’s own family to support the exhumation of Lorca’s grave, something which has long been opposed by his family. The judge who ordered the census must now decide if the exhumation can go forward. If it does it may bring a sense of peace to the victims’ families and upset Spain’s conservative voters who make up nearly half the country.