Mass grave in Spain may contain body of poet Garcia Lorca

Federico Garcia Lorca's family won't oppose the opening of a mass grave where his body is believed to have been dumped after Franco supporters allegedly executed the poet and playwright at the outbreak of Spain's Civil War, a leading daily said Thursday.

Last week, relatives of two other men believed to be buried in the same grave asked National Court judge Baltasar Garzon to order the grave opened. The request is part of a surging nationwide movement to give proper burial to the thousands of people known to have been killed by supporters of late dictator Gen. Francisco Franco and buried in mass graves.

But Lorca's family have long preferred to let the matter rest, leaving one of the 1936-39 war's most intriguing mysteries — the whereabouts of the poet's body — unresolved.

Investigations indicate the poet, who was open about his homosexuality, was shot along with a school teacher named Dioscoro Galindo Gonzalez and two labor union activists — Francisco Galadi and Juan Arcolla — on Aug. 18, 1936, near the Viznar mountain gorge in his native province of Granada in the south.