With the help of the Nazis

Spies at home

Franco’s es­pi­onage ini­tially had a clearly Cata­lan tone, with sig­nif­i­cant names help­ing fi­nance it, such as Francesc Cambó and Josep Bertran i Musiu, and oth­ers who acted di­rectly as spies, such as Car­les Sentís and Josep Pla. The main or­gan­i­sa­tion was known as the In­for­ma­tion Ser­vice of the North­ern Bor­der of Spain (SIFNE, in its Span­ish ini­tials), which was for the most part funded by Cata­lans. SIFNE op­er­ated mainly in the south of France and Cat­alo­nia, and was mostly ded­i­cated to mon­i­tor­ing in­for­ma­tion, ob­serv­ing ships leav­ing for the re­pub­li­can zone and in­ter­cept­ing mes­sages. On Feb­ru­ary, 28, 1938, SIFNE was ab­sorbed by the Mil­i­tary In­tel­li­gence and Po­lice Ser­vice. Para­dox­i­cally, the rea­son for this de­ci­sion was not only the de­sire to avoid dis­per­sal and im­prove ef­fi­ciency, but also be­cause “the hard­core at the Gen­er­alis­simo’s head­quar­ters con­sid­ered it too Cata­lanist and monar­chist,” as noted by his­to­rian Jordi Guix, au­thor of a book on the sub­ject.

Aside from SIFNE, there were more than five po­lit­i­cal and mil­i­tary in­for­ma­tion cen­tres in the ser­vice of Franco’s Spain. An­other or­gan­i­sa­tion ded­i­cated to es­pi­onage was the Span­ish Refugee Aid Com­mit­tee. De­spite its name, it was en­gaged in car­ry­ing out doc­u­men­ta­tion and in­for­ma­tion work for the Na­tion­al­ist gov­ern­ment. Cata­lan par­tic­i­pa­tion was also sig­nif­i­cant here as well. One of its lead­ers was Jorge Utrillo, a staunch sup­porter of Franco who had fled Barcelona a few days after the coup. The of­fice was also a hotbed of cor­rup­tion and ded­i­cated to pro­mot­ing repa­tri­a­tions in ex­change for sub­stan­tial com­mis­sions.

Al­though the free­dom with which Franco’s spies acted caused a scan­dal in the French press, they con­tin­ued to act with im­punity, and were even helped by French agents. In a doc­u­mented study on exile and Franco’s re­pres­sion in France (Uni­ver­si­tat de València, 2012), his­to­rian Jordi Guixé re­pro­duced many notes and re­ports on mil­i­tary and civil­ian tar­gets in re­pub­li­can Cat­alo­nia. Of these, 140 were writ­ten by José Camps, one of the most ac­tive spies. They con­tain in­for­ma­tion on a ship­ment of weapons to Va­len­cia and Barcelona; plans for gas and ex­plo­sives fac­to­ries in Sant An­dreu, which he de­scribes as “one of the most im­por­tant in the man­u­fac­ture of ex­plo­sives in Spain”; maps of the Sabadell air­field, where the planes were hid­den and the main fuel depot in El Prat de Llo­bre­gat; and the exact lo­ca­tion of 36 re­pub­li­can planes in Reus, in­clud­ing the ideal time to bomb them. There are even de­tails about the exact lo­ca­tion of Pres­i­dent Lluís Com­pa­nys’ anti-air­craft shel­ter in the Gen­er­al­i­tat palace. Camps also made fur­ther re­ports, such as the one he sent de­tail­ing the ca­su­al­ties and dam­age caused by one of the bomb­ings by Ital­ian air­craft in the coun­try’s cap­i­tal.

Nazi com­plic­ity

Es­pi­onage, as one would imag­ine, did not bring an end to the war. With the vic­tory of the Franco regime, the goal be­came to spy on, per­se­cute and cap­ture the main Re­pub­li­can lead­ers. Franco’s col­lu­sion with the French au­thor­i­ties was ab­solute, even prior to the Ger­man oc­cu­pa­tion. In Feb­ru­ary 1939, when the whole of Cat­alo­nia had been oc­cu­pied but the war had not yet ended, what was known as the Bérard-Jor­nada pacts were signed, through which po­lice com­mis­sions were set up to re­cover prop­erty in France and the con­di­tions were es­tab­lished for the sur­veil­lance and repa­tri­a­tion of Re­pub­li­can refugees.

The sit­u­a­tion changed com­pletely on June 14, 1940, when the Ger­mans took Paris. The armistice re­sulted in di­rect con­trol of the north of the coun­try through the Nazi ad­min­is­tra­tion and the es­tab­lish­ment of a col­lab­o­ra­tionist regime in much of Oc­c­i­ta­nia and north­ern Cat­alo­nia, known as the Vichy regime. From then on, the Span­ish regime had free rein to pur­sue Re­pub­li­cans, some of whom tried to cross the At­lantic to take refuge in other coun­tries, es­pe­cially Mex­ico. A few days after the Ger­mans en­tered the French cap­i­tal, the Span­ish am­bas­sador, José Félix de Le­quer­ica Erqui­cia, began to or­gan­ise the po­lice ser­vices with the col­lab­o­ra­tion of the head of the Falange in France, Fed­erico Velilla, and agent Pedro Uur­raca.

The ar­rival of the Ger­mans in the French cap­i­tal would be fate­ful for some Re­pub­li­can lead­ers, in­clud­ing Lluís Com­pa­nys, Joan Peiró and a long list of oth­ers. To pre­vent the flight of Re­pub­li­can lead­ers, Span­ish for­eign min­is­ter Ramon Ser­rano Suñer sent the French am­bas­sador a list with the names of more than 600 peo­ple to be ar­rested and ex­tra­dited. On Feb­ru­ary 24, 1941, an agree­ment was signed be­tween the Vichy gov­ern­ment and Ser­rano Suñer, ac­cord­ing to which the French gov­ern­ment un­der­took “to hand over all Span­ish refugees to the gov­ern­ment of Madrid, ac­cord­ing to a list to be drawn up by the Span­ish bod­ies set up for this pur­pose, a list that will in­clude all those peo­ple whom the Fran­coist au­thor­i­ties con­sider re­spon­si­ble for crimes com­mit­ted in Spain, both com­mon law and po­lit­i­cal crimes”.

In fact, many Re­pub­li­cans man­aged to cross the bor­der or stay in France, as ev­i­denced by a re­port from the French in­te­rior min­istry dat­ing back to the early 1950s, which puts the num­ber of Span­ish refugees still in French ter­ri­tory at more than 117,000.

The cap­ture of Com­pa­nys

Many Cata­lan ex­iles were the vic­tims of es­pi­onage and per­se­cu­tion, but the case of Lluís Com­pa­nys is, with­out doubt, the most sig­nif­i­cant, due to the sym­bol­ism of his po­si­tion, the pro­ce­dure in­volved and the end he met with. Ap­par­ently, the ser­vices of the Fran­coist po­lice at­tached to the em­bassy be­came aware of the Cata­lan pres­i­dent’s ad­dress after oc­cu­py­ing the Cata­lan gov­ern­ment’s mod­est Layetana of­fice in Paris. In May 1940, even be­fore France had fallen to the Nazis, Ur­raca told Madrid: “In a few days, ex-pres­i­dent Com­pa­nys will be forced to leave Paris… and go to live in Le Baule, … where he will not al­lowed to move from.”

With the fall of Paris, events ac­cel­er­ated and the in­tel­li­gence ser­vices of the Fran­coist po­lice, con­trolled by Ramón Ser­rano Suñer, Franco’s brother-in-law, and the Ger­man se­cret po­lice, the Gestapo, worked to­gether in com­plete har­mony. The same was true of the Vichy au­thor­i­ties, the satel­lite gov­ern­ment of the Nazis in France. From that point on, all Re­pub­li­can politi­cians were sub­jected to strict sur­veil­lance and iso­la­tion and house ar­rest mea­sures were also ap­plied in order to keep some refugees away from the Span­ish bor­der.

On Au­gust 13, agent Pedro Ur­raca and five other men burst into the villa where Com­pa­nys lived and, fol­low­ing a search and con­fis­ca­tion of every­thing of value, moved the Cata­lan pres­i­dent to La Baule po­lice head­quar­ters. Com­pa­nys’ wife, Carme Ballester, de­scribed the ar­rest: “Two men dressed in civil­ian clothes and four in Ger­man sol­diers’ uni­forms [...] en­tered the house hold­ing ma­chine guns. And my hus­band and my­self were then searched. After find­ing that we were not car­ry­ing any­thing, they set the whole house on fire and turned every­thing up­side down [...] The sol­diers kept point­ing their guns at my hus­band, who was sit­ting in a chair, and I had to show the two men in civil­ian clothes where things were, but al­ways with a re­volver in my back.” The pres­i­dent was trans­ferred to La Santé prison in Paris. Days later, two men in uni­form and some sol­diers showed up at his home and de­manded the money that be­longed to the Cata­lan gov­ern­ment. The threat was a fright­en­ing one: “If you want, you can still save him, if you tell us where the other money and doc­u­ments are.”

The day after this visit, on Au­gust 26, Pedro Ur­raca was com­mis­sioned to hand Com­pa­nys over to the Span­ish au­thor­i­ties. In his diary, the agent wrote: “He is no longer but a pool of life that wants to ap­pear, be­fore his ac­cusers, as an hon­est man with­out blem­ish. It must be dif­fi­cult for him in the en­vi­ron­ment that awaits him down there. This tem­po­rary free­dom to travel seems to him like a gift that life gives him be­fore aban­don­ing him, and he wants to enjoy it with all his might. But the events of the mo­ment are too strong for the world to deign to look at that man who is will­ing to make anony­mous sac­ri­fice and who vol­un­tar­ily feels ready to for­get his past.” As is well known, Lluís Com­pa­nys was sub­jected to a very brief war coun­cil and as­sas­si­nated at Mon­tjuïc Cas­tle on Oc­to­ber 15.