Free Operation Garbo by Juan Pujol Garcia

semi-military intelligence and counter-intelligence service. To which I replied, somewhat rashly perhaps, that if they could get me a job as a foreign correspondent for a Spanish newspaper or magazine, I had what was necessary to travel to Britain, namely a passport. Once there, I’d be able to obtain information for them. Federico thought that a much more interesting alternative and asked for more time to think about it. I thought it best not to run for another interview too quickly, so told him that I was going to see my family in Barcelona – which in the end I never did – and that I would give him a call on my return.
    After the civil war, General Franco’s government was in dire need of foreign exchange. The Bank of Spain was heading for bankruptcy, for neither industry nor agriculture were in any position to earn money through exports. A big advertising campaign was launched requesting people to surrender their gold and jewellery to help the nation, but little was forthcoming. Then they asked if Spaniards with assets abroad – and those who had emigrated to America – would make their resourcesavailable to help the nation, but the results of this appeal only covered a few months’ deficit. Finally, the Bank of Spain said that it would open all doors and offer every facility to anyone who could procure any foreign assets for the national coffers.
    It occurred to me to pretend that my father had left funds and shares in Britain and that all the relevant documents were in a deposit box in a Portuguese bank. This story got me my exit visa in no time at all, with the additional help of a Basque-Cuban friend of mine, Zulueta, who held some honorary post with the Bank of Spain’s currency police. Furnished with a passport and an exit visa for Portugal, I decided to leave Spain and to settle down in a country which offered better prospects for peace and security. Not that I had abandoned the possibilities opened up by my German contact in Madrid, but I had to earn a living and life at the Hotel Majestic was going from bad to worse.
    To help me on my arrival in Portugal I had obtained a heavy gold chain from a relative, which I hid inside a wide belt in order to smuggle it through customs. I was careful not to arouse suspicion as there were stiff penalties for taking gold or jewellery out of the country. Once in Lisbon I stayed at the Hotel Suizo-Atlantico in Rua da Gloria, which was near both the Spanish consulate and the Spanish embassy. There was a large Spanish colony in Lisbon and I was determined to get to know as many of them as possible, beginning with the consular and embassy staffs.
    I registered myself at the consulate as a Spanish resident abroad, alleging that I was a writer working in partnership with Luances, an Austrian poet living in Lisbon. Together we wrote two bilingual six-page pamphlets on what was happening in Europe, with Portuguese on one side and Spanish on the other, and sold about 10,000 copies of these to the various Allied embassies, who then gave them away free of charge as propaganda . I made sure that my signature was not on the pamphlets as I did not want my name spread around, least of all in foreign embassies.
    I had thought that once in Portugal it would be easy for me to get a visa for Britain, which I would be able to show Federico when next we met, but when I went to the Spanish consulate to get one, they turned me down. The reason they gave was that as my passport had been issued by Madrid’s General Police headquarters, I had to go there to get my visa. I replied that I didn’t have enough money to return to Madrid before going on to England. I could only go if they would pay for my trip. ‘I’ve only enough money to get to London. I am on Spanish territory in this consulate, so I think that in all fairness I have a right to have my case dealt with here.’ But they were adamant, neither excuses nor reasonable explanations would move them; they stuck to their guns and would