Looking for Lorca

In April 2006 I was commissioned by a Barcelona gallery to locate the mass grave in Andalusia where the remains of the great Spanish poet Frederico Garcia Lorca lay with others murdered by the rebel Nationalist Militia in August 1936 during the Spanish Civil War, and to make drawings. We located a site in a wild wood on the edge of a lane. As I sat sketching the outlines for this painting a strange thing happened: appearing as if from nowhere I glimpsed through the trees a ‘crocodile’ line of small children dressed in white escorted by their teachers walking past on the lane in silence. At that moment two white doves flew high up into the trees above me.