"See you at the 'Martínez'": The Spaniards of the British SOE who fought behind Nazi lines

In the mid-1950s, like every year, some of the Spaniards living in London dressed up and headed towards Piccadilly Circus. Their destination was the popular Martinez Restaurant on Swallow Street, near Regent Street , where they would gather to hug and cry together and to reminisce about their adventures in two wars.

Veterans of the Special Executive Operations (SOE) such as José García Flores, Jesús Velasco or Manuel Espallargas , who had fought in the ranks of the special commando expressly created at the request of Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1940 and who at the end of the war settled in Great Britain, not without bureaucratic difficulties, and where they had to start a new life from scratch after being discharged from the army in 1946.

The Martínez, which was part of “the Ronda restaurant and lounge frequented by royalty, statesmen and diplomats”, according to a promotional postcard from the 1930s, had been founded a decade earlier and did indeed have a certain cachet, because it had paradoxically been popularised by King Alfonso XIII among the Spanish ruling class living in London long before the exiles chose it as a meeting centre: in between, the Proclamation of the Second Republic in 1931 , the October Revolution of 1934, the coup d'état of 18 July 1936 and the cursed Civil War that lasted until 1939.

The Martínez had been founded a decade earlier and indeed had a certain prestige, because it had been popularized by King Alfonso XIII.

Despite being advertised as “modern and economical” on the same postcard – as it continues to boast today – it was still too expensive for the majority of those Spanish veterans who had fought first in the Republican Army , and then as volunteers in the British Army, during the Second World War.

“You had to buy a ticket, but those who couldn't afford it were helped. A lot of money was raised for the widows and children of the company through absurd auctions,” recalled Sara García, daughter of José García Flores : “They would auction off an item. Someone would win and pay for it, and then they would put it up for auction again. It didn't matter too much what it was. Once I remember someone running into the kitchen and coming back with a cabbage, which they auctioned off for a lot of money. It was typical of the fun and camaraderie that prevailed. They must have relived a fair number of traumatic experiences. I remember a man named Vargas, who—as it happened—was also a waiter at the Martínez on other days, and he always ended up crying on my father's shoulder .”

The latest belongs to the recently published Spaniards against Nazism. Republicans in the British Army during World War II (Espasa) by Séan F. Scullion , a work that compiles the experiences of those soldiers flying a foreign flag. In addition to those meetings at the Martínez, which brought together not only the so-called Sconces of the SOE, such as Manuel Espallargas and José García Flores , among many others, but also members of the 361st, such as Antonio Vargas, and the 1st Spanish Company, there were other events such as protests by the most politically active group.

They would become especially noticeable from 1958 onwards, when the incorporation of Fernando Castiella as ambassador of the Franco regime in London was announced. He had also fought as a volunteer in the Second World War, but in the Blue Division , alongside the Wehrmacht of the Third Reich on the Eastern Front : the young people of 1942 who had enlisted to fight against communism (USSR), compared to those who had already been exiled and had done so against fascism in the British Army. History of Spain.

But who were these Republicans who appeared in the ranks of the British Army ? Séan F. Scullion, who has been investigating the adventures of this relatively small group of former combatants of the People's Army of the Republic, explains this to El Confidencial over the phone: "There were two large waves of volunteers: the one in 1940, who had enlisted in the French Foreign Legion after being held in concentration camps in France—such as Gurs or Argéles Sur le Mer—following the Spanish Civil War; and the one in 1942, whose origin is different, since they did not come from French units, but directly from the camps in North Africa, where they had been imprisoned until they were liberated by the Allies' Operation Torch ."

But who were these republicans who appeared in the ranks of the British Army?

The first group was made up of the exiles from the Republican Army who had crossed into France via the Pyrenees after the fall of Catalonia between December 1938 and January 1939 and who, after spending almost a year confined in these French internment camps, were offered enlistment in the army when war broke out with Germany: “They joined the Foreign Legion and some fought in Norway and others in the Middle East ,” explains Séan F. Scullion, “before being reunited in Great Britain in 1940, those who survived or were not taken prisoner of course.” The latter would be precisely the ones who would end up in Nazi camps like Mauthaussen .

The second wave, on the other hand, comprised the thousands of Spaniards evacuated to North Africa with the complete collapse of the Republic between May and April 1939. They were also interned in camps, "the majority in Algeria, some in Morocco, and a few in Tunisia," according to Séan. "We're talking about thousands and thousands of Spaniards interned as political prisoners and used as slaves ." Thus, when the Allies liberated the region after Operation Torch in 1942, some of them in turn enlisted in the British army. "Many of them were strongly ideologically inclined, especially anarchists, and a very few communists, but the majority were socialists."

With the first volunteers of 1940, the 1st Spanish Company was formed in September, shortly after the Battles of Narvik in Norway and Dunkirk in France, when the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) had been expelled from Europe and France signed the armistice with the Third Reich , dividing into Free France - the collaborationist company of Marshal Pétain with its capital in Vichy, and Nazi-occupied France. It was from this company that some Spanish volunteers were selected, such as the aforementioned Jesús Velasco, José García Flores and Manuel Espallargas, for the newly created SOE - the special commandos with sabotage missions behind enemy lines - due to Operation Sconce, which consisted of an Allied intervention in the event of Spain being invaded by Germany:

“When they began planning possible operations in the Iberian Peninsula, they realized there weren't many soldiers who spoke Spanish, so they recruited Republican volunteers to be agents. Thus, between December 1940 and the fall of 1943, some 100 or 120 Sconces would move from the 1st Company to be trained as special commandos behind enemy lines. Most of them weren't used in operations, but about 20 or 30 were.”

Within Sconce, some operations were planned, such as Golden Eye: the surveillance of Spain to prevent it from intervening in the war on the side of Germany. This was entrusted to the very same Naval Intelligence officer, Ian Fleming , later famous for his character as James Bond. From 1940 onwards, several waves of Sconces were trained – there were up to four – and although they would never intervene in the Iberian Peninsula, which discouraged some of them. Meanwhile, in Egypt , 63 Spaniards came to form part of the 450th Special Commando of the Middle East, where they had arrived after having enlisted in the French Armed Forces, as part of that first group of 1940. They would train there as commandos and participate in operations in the eastern Mediterranean and in the Battle of Crete.

Interestingly, among these special commandos from the Civil War, there were some also from the Nationalist side, as was the case of Peter Kemp, a British SOE officer who spoke Spanish and had fought with the Requetés and later in the Legion, and who was in fact an SOE officer: "Fortunately, they didn't mix. They only did a little training together in Scotland. But it seems they didn't have the opportunity to work together because he wouldn't have had much luck with the Spanish in his team."

Also notable was the case of Francisco Casabayo, the most highly rated of the Sconces I, according to SOE officers: “He’s intelligent and thinks quickly. He’s worked hard and has completed a good course. Category B,” and who would later turn out to be a double agent who passed information to Franco’s intelligence in London, as he communicated with the then press attaché José Brugada: “It was a rather unusual case: he was trained as a sconce but wanted to return to Spain due to hardship and personal reasons, so he offered to pass information to the Spanish embassy in London about the planning of these operations,” comments Scullion. However, José Brugada, alias ‘Peppermint’, was in fact an MI5 double agent recruited by the British –recounts Javier Juárez in Madrid, London, Berlin: Franco's spies in Hitler's service –, for which he was arrested and interned until the end of the war.

In addition to the SOE incidents, there were also some Spaniards in the also recently created SAS, the legendary Special Air Service, in which Ángel Camarena was, who had been none other than General Francisco Franco 's chauffeur when he was in command of the Canary Islands, shortly before the coup of July 18, 1936: "Camarena's story is fascinating, a true adventurer. First he enlisted as a soldier in the Corps of Engineers in the Spanish army before the Civil War, but even then he was arrested because he was highly politicized. He was arrested but trying to escape in one of the cars he crushed his own officer and killed him. He was also implicated in an attempt to capture Franco's daughter , although his role is not known exactly. What is known is that he was Franco's military chauffeur in the Canary Islands and when he was arrested again and the decision was made to shoot him, on the day they were going to kill her he was able to escape from the floating prison where he was being held and boarded a "a passing ship, which was British. Unfortunately, he was sent back to the Francoist authorities a few days later, but luckily he wasn't shot and was sent to a detention center in Morocco, where he remained until 1941. Eighteen months later, after the aforementioned Operation Torch, he enlisted in the British Army, became a member of the famous SAS, and was involved in several operations in France and Germany."

Camarena would be another of the regulars at the Martínez meetings led especially by Agustín Roa Ventura , Manuel Espallargas and the waiter of the Spanish restaurant, Antonio Vargas, who later formed the Association of Spanish Veterans in the early 1960s.

By then, it wasn't Fernando Castiella 's announcement as a possible Spanish ambassador to the United Kingdom; rather, he was visiting the country as Minister of Foreign Affairs, and the association organized protests in the capital, encouraged by some members of the Labour Party . They ran into problems, as Séan explains: “I don't mention it much in that final chapter because that's a different story, but they actually politicized their association quite a bit as they wanted to act as a voice against the Franco regime, and in Britain, veterans' associations don't usually do that: they're there for the veterans, not to support any political group, so they received criticism from British veterans for establishing themselves as an association. What's more, this group of Spanish veterans was linked to the origins of Amnesty International.”

Later, it would be Manuel Fraga Iribarne, now ambassador in London since 1973, who would become a regular at the Martínez , where he could be heard discussing his preparations for the Transition after Franco's death: "Antonio Vargas Rivas witnessed the preparations and the work carried out behind the scenes by Manuel Fraga Iribarne to return to politics in Spain after Franco : he became Minister of the Interior and Vice President of the provisional government of Carlos Arias Navarro. It was a before and after in a period of turmoil that lasted almost forty years for millions of people."