The answer to one of Spain's great historical mysteries is believed to lie in an area of olive-clad mountainside, the size of half a football pitch.

The site has been fenced off and placed under 24-hour guard, such is the sensitivity of what is about to take place.

This remote spot, between the Andalucian villages of Viznar and Alfacar, is where the poet and dramatist Federico Garcia Lorca was murdered before daybreak on 18 August 1936 - by gunmen loyal to General Francisco Franco.

The Spanish Civil War was a month old, and seven decades later the remains of arguably its most famous victim are set to be unearthed and identified.