The Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (ARMH) has submitted an official written request to the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, demanding the declassification of documents regarding the assassination of the poet Federico García Lorca that the State keeps hidden, on the 90th anniversary of the crime.

Exactly 90 years ago, the poet Federico García Lorca was shot on the outskirts of Granada, in a place between the municipalities of Alfacar and Víznar that no one has yet been able to confirm with exactitude. His disappearance is not an exception: it is the best-known symbol of a phenomenon that remains open throughout the State and that, right now, is experiencing a silent setback where the PP and Vox share government. Just as the anniversary of Lorca's death is being commemorated, the Junta de Andalucía – the autonomous community where the poet was from and which has the most mass graves in the entire State, with more than 3,000 people buried in the Víznar ravine alone – has set an expiration date for the law that protects the search for the disappeared of Francoism.

The summer of 1936, Federico García Lorca (Granada, June 5, 1898 - between Víznar and Alfacar, Granada, August 18 or 19, 1936) decided to leave Madrid and go to Granada for a short stay. The assassination of the Minister of Finance during the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, Calvo Sotelo, on July 13, had left him very uneasy. "July 18 was his saint's day and his father's, and they were going to celebrate it, and also to say goodbye to the family because he was leaving for Mexico with the actress Margarida Xirgu. His intention was to return to Madrid in the autumn, because he was to premiere La casa de Bernarda Alba and publish Poeta en Nueva York", explains journalist and writer Víctor Fernández.

In Spain, the past is not the past, but a political weapon of daily use. Unlike in Catalonia, where the anti-Francoist consensus of all Catalanist forces allows for a greater consensus, Spain has not resolved its historical memory. And the symbol that best represents this failure is the figure of the Granada-born poet Federico García Lorca, murdered 90 years ago, and whose remains have not yet been found. This is undoubtedly an uncomfortable anniversary for the Spanish right, as it breaks the narrative that one must look forward and opt for "concord". What "concord" is possible when there are thousands and thousands of families who do not know where their loved ones are, including a pivotal figure in Spanish and even world literature, studied in all universities worldwide?

We commemorate the 90th anniversary of the assassination of Federico García Lorca with a special dossier on all the questions surrounding the poet's death.

In the last poem of the Sonetos del amor oscuro, Federico García Lorca wrote: “Tú nunca entenderás lo que te quiero / porque duermes en mí y estás dormido”. To Javier Calvo, the upper half of the artistic duo known as els Javis, the letter o at the end of dormido particularly caught his attention. “I read it as an adolescent and thought it was a typo, but no, it said dormido, not dormida, and it referred to a man –he explains–. But in school textbooks, it was omitted that Lorca was gay, as if it were a shame or as if it were not important to explain who he was. And we must remember that he was murdered, among other things, for being homosexual. It has not been sufficiently explained that the second most important author in Spanish literature is gay, nor from what pain and what wound his work came from”.

Some images stubbornly survive the passage of time. Federico García Lorca, one of the most important Spanish-language poets of the 20th century, was murdered in August 1936 by a firing squad of soldiers from the Francoist side and buried so that no one would ever find him again. Today, however, we can see his face again, with perfect clarity, in a 1920s car, climbing a mountain. He is in the back seat with other people. The images could be from 1932, and he was traveling with the legendary theater company La Barraca. It is one of the few moving images of one of the great exponents of the Generation of '27 and an internationally renowned author.

In the autumn of 1935, ninety years ago this year, Barcelona was gripped by a wave of enthusiasm for the plays of Federico García Lorca. There were 142 performances of four of his plays in three different theaters: The silly lady, Yerma, Blood Wedding and Doña Rosita the spinster, which was a world premiere. During his stay of about four months in the city to prepare everything, Lorca reunited with Dalí after being estranged for many years. He also met Gala, but he didn't like her and she became jealous.