The Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (ARMH) has filed a formal petition to Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez demanding the declassification of all state documents related to the 1936 assassination of poet Federico García Lorca, the filing dated 17 August 2026 shows.
The demand comes as Spain marks 90 years since Lorca was shot between 4 and 5 a.m. on 18 August 1936 in a ravine between Víznar and Alfacar, Granada, alongside two anarchist bullfighters and a republican schoolteacher. His remains have never been located. ARMH president Emilio Silva said Spain's democracy has spent 50 years relying on an official-secrets law signed by dictator Francisco Franco in 1968. A 2022 Democratic Memory Law promised updated secrecy legislation, but the government missed its one-year deadline to pass it.
Government data places some 6,000 mass graves across Spain holding more than 11,000 unidentified victims, with experts estimating the true toll could reach 25,000. Previous attempts to exhume Lorca in 2008, 2013 and 2016 all failed.