Federico García Lorca was shot with three other men in August 1936, and a 2009 dig at the supposed grave in Alfacar found no remains

Federico García Lorca was 38 when he was shot at dawn on 18 August 1936, at the start of the Spanish Civil War. Reports name three men killed with him: schoolteacher Dioscoro Galindo and two anarchist bullfighters, Francisco Galadí and Joaquín Arcollas. They are believed to lie in one unmarked grave near an olive tree outside Alfacar. In September 2008 relatives of Galindo and Galadí had a case before Judge Baltasar Garzón, and Lorca's family said it would not oppose a judicial order to exhume. The family had earlier opposed a dig. A local judge ruled the dig served the public interest. Digging began at Fuente Grande in Alfacar at the end of October 2009 and ran about half a football pitch. By mid-December no human remains had been found. The Andalusian government reportedly spent 70,000 euros^†. Biographer Ian Gibson said he had no doubt Lorca lay in that area. A book claimed the grave was emptied on Franco's orders in the weeks after the killing; that is a claim, not a finding. On 20 September 2012 a Granada court ruled it was not competent to search for the four men, citing the passage of time and the 1977 amnesty law. Ground-penetrating radar found six possible graves at Fuente Grande, and none held Lorca. In 2026 his body has not been found.