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  I have no qualms in asserting that he was the most honest, noble and disinterested man that I have ever known. His affability was such that not only his friends, but also his enemies – if he had any – saw in him a protector and a refuge. He was always ready to listen to people’s worries and to offer help with their problems and solace for their sorrows. Unquestionably a man of ideals, he was always prepared to assist those in trouble.

  Perhaps such a description gives the impression that I over idealised my father. But even if I were to stand back and take a detached view, I would still describe him exactly as I have done, even though he cannot unfortunately read what I am saying. If he could read the praises that my poor but enthusiastic pen has written, he would probably have been made a happy man. Two episodes from my early life will illustrate what a straightforward, generous and loving father he was.

  My older relations used to say that as a boy I was somewhat difficult to control. I not only broke my own toys but often those of my brother and sisters as well; they used to guard theirs with great care, lest they fall into my hands. From what I have been told, I was indeed fairly unmanageable; so, when I was seven years old, my mother decided to send me away to a well-known boarding school run by the Marist Fathers at Mataró, about twenty miles from Barcelona. My brother was also sent at the same time so that he could look after me and stop me from feeling homesick.

  The school was called Valldèmia and I remember it well. It had spacious classrooms, large gardens and playing fields, and an education with a decidedly French feel to it, which was not surprising as most of the fathers teaching there were of that nationality.

  I spent four interminable years there as a boarder; they seemed particularly endless because we only went home for Christmas, Easter and the summer holidays. During the rest of the year, we were only allowed out on Sundays if a relative came to visit us. And this is precisely what my father did, week after week for four long years; he did not miss a single Sunday during the whole of my time at Mataró. He would arrive by train early on Sunday morning, fetch us from school and take us for long walks along the beach, ending up in one of the town’s many restaurants for lunch. Then in the afternoon we would invariably call in at a patisserie, where he would buy cakes and sweets for us to take back to school. During our time together he would tell stories, give advice and encourage us in our studies. Even now I can remember the exhortations, admonishments and gentle reproaches with which he regaled us during our long walks by the sea.

  A second example of my father’s affectionate nature occurred when I was about nineteen. One day I suddenly began to feel stabbing pains in my stomach. The doctors diagnosed acute appendicitis and arranged for me to be taken to the hospital immediately. I was rushed into the operating room, where they gave me an anaesthetic. Three days later, when the incision became infected and refused to heal, I developed a high temperature and became delirious. In between my bouts of delirium I was aware of my father’s presence; all night long he sat there, holding my hand, weeping. It was the only occasion I ever saw my father cry. I have never forgotten either his tears, his unhappiness or his tenderness.

  My father belonged to no political party: he was apolitical. He was deeply steeped in liberalism and believed implicitly in freedom. He abhorred oppression. He never attended political gatherings or party meetings; he cared neither for Right nor Left. If anything, he gravitated towards the Centre, where he found common ground with those who held his own ideas on liberalism and economic freedom. He taught me to respect the individuality of human beings, their sorrows and their sufferings, be they rich or poor, good or evil, black or white. He despised war and bloody revolutions, scorning the despot, the authoritarian, those prepared to take advantage of others and those filled with prejudice. So strong was his personality and so powerful his hold over me and my brother that neither of us ever belonged to a political party. Politics, he said, were for the politicians, although he always exercised his duty as citizen and voted for one or another of the groups seeking power.

  My father never got into an argument; as far as he was concerned, everyone was entitled to his own beliefs: it was not for him to butt into a discussion. As a result, he felt himself free to condemn misgovernment and equally free – if a vote was available – to give his vote to those he considered good patriots. Holding such liberal ideas, he was deeply depressed by the Carlist Wars, the Spanish–Moroccan War and, bloodiest of all, the First World War, all of which occurred in his lifetime. He could not understand why mankind had embarked on such an orgy of self-destruction, why so many young lives should be sacrificed, so many people shorn of all their vitality and virtue. Was history unable to check such dismemberment, such a violent rout of humanity? Spain had taken a neutral position in the First World War, although the country leant toward the Allied cause. Catalan industry had increased its export trade with France, Spain’s nearest neighbour, and other parts of Spain had also produced a flood of goods which were in great demand throughout the Entente Cordiale. There was no unemployment; instead, there was prosperity and plenty, but this did not make my father happy. He would recall Tolstoy’s words condemning hostilities: ‘War is so horrendous, so atrocious, that no man, especially one of Christian principles, should feel able to undertake the responsibility of starting it.’

  How then was it possible that those who did start it presumed themselves to be Christians? My father did not criticise the army for existing, but directed his anger against those who gave the orders, the politicians: those who send thousands upon thousands of simple townsfolk and labourers to their death, having first taught them to hate the enemy. My father did not bear a grudge against the military uniform, nor against the man wearing it: his revulsion was directed exclusively toward the spirit of war. He recognised that officers, generals, military commanders and even the troops in the barracks were indispensable for they guaranteed national order and independence. But he found it very hard to understand why politicians had seized upon the assassination of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914 as an excuse for the holocaust that followed. Artius, the Roman orator, said: ‘The pig feeds on acorns, the stork on snakes and history on human lives.’ This may be true, but my father could not stomach it and taught me to loathe the violence and the utter destruction of the battlefield.

  A great number of friends and acquaintances – including a great many of those who fought on the Allied side during the Second World War – have asked me at different times why I threw myself, wholeheartedly, totally and completely, with all my strength and determination, behind the Allied cause. What harm had the forces of the European Axis done to me to make me want to put all my energies into disrupting their ambitions? The Duke of Edinburgh, who honoured me with a long private audience at Buckingham Palace, asked me, after I had told him of my wartime exploits: ‘Why were you, a Spaniard, so keen to help the British during the Second World War?’

  The answer lies in my beliefs, the same beliefs that my father instilled in me during my childhood, beliefs which urged me to fight against all tyranny and oppression. I have never borne, nor indeed do I bear now, any grudge against the German people. In fact, I have always admired their industry and their love of tradition. They suffered a crushing defeat in 1918 and no one was there to give them a helping hand. They had been deeply humiliated and left with no friends to comfort them. It was at this point, at this decisive moment when the lack of understanding on the part of their neighbours left them dispossessed, scorned and offended, that an ambitious and cruel human being – a maniac, an inhuman brute – arose and cajoled them with his empty verbosity. He made them believe in what was not believable, in what was irrational, unlikely, impossible and inadmissible, namely the strength of the Prussian army and the greatness of the German people. Both these nations were decisive in bringing about that stubborn arrogance which fuelled the Nazi leader’s provocative talk. How could the German people have fallen victim to such stratagems? What sophistries and
snares had those devious, despotic rabble-rousers used to enable them to indoctrinate the minds of intelligent and resourceful Germans so successfully?

  The man’s name was Adolf Hitler; his doctrine, Mein Kampf. Hitler hated both the political parties of the Left, as well as those which supported the Hapsburgs. His greatest spite, though, he reserved for the Jewish people, whom he managed to nearly exterminate by the most perverse, malignant and evil means ever witnessed in history. Many millions were his victims and their deaths were upon his conscience. Mankind would not tolerate such satanic splendour. Nor would I. That was why I fought against injustice and iniquity with the only weapons at my disposal.

  2

  Barcelona

  A historian is a prophet that looks back.

  F. von Schiegel

  ‘On reading a biography, bear in mind that the truth can never be published.’ I do not accept this dictum of George Bernard Shaw’s, but would rather claim that there is an exception to every rule. I intend in these pages to refute the famous Irish writer’s comment by directing every effort toward exploring all that I can unearth about the double identity that became ARABEL–GARBO.

  When I look back at the past, I seem to be watching a documentary which, despite the whirlwind of time, has not become blurred. After four years at Valldèmia, I returned to Barcelona to attend a primary school less than half a block away from home, run by the De La Salle Brothers. The four of us also received private French lessons three days a week from a teacher from Marseilles, for French in those days was what English is today, the universal language of tourism, diplomacy and business. But what I remember most when I feel nostalgic is my beloved father, my friend and mentor. I remember the smell of his stinking, black tobacco, for which he had a passion. He particularly liked long, thin cigars, similar to those blended in Tuscany, which we in Catalonia call caliquenyes; in no time at all a room would reek so foully from the stench that we would all be forced to leave, so he usually did his best to smoke them out of doors where he would not inconvenience those around him. He frequently tried to give them up, but never succeeded. He was eventually so poisoned by them that they contributed in no small way to his death.

  I remember too his love of cards, a distraction which he particularly enjoyed on Sunday afternoons. His favourite game was Manilla, for which four people were needed. The group usually consisted of my father; a family friend; the headmaster of the local secondary school, who was a priest called Mossen Josep; and myself. Eventually, my father decided that my brother and I should attend Mossen Josep’s school. But if the truth be told, I soon found both the school and its headmaster extremely tedious. The lessons seemed endless and dull and I attended them most unwillingly. After three years there I had become a hefty fellow of fifteen, with an incipient beard. Soon I was shaving and thought myself every inch a man. Going out with girls accounted for a fair bit of my time and the rest I devoted to sports, gymnastics and hiking.

  One day I had a row with one of my teachers: he had it in for me and I didn’t think much of him. I came home and told my father that I did not want to stay at school any longer. He took my decision calmly and replied that if I was not going to study anymore, I must get a job. I accepted the challenge and went to work in a hardware shop in the old Carrer Comte d’el Asalto, in the old quarter of Barcelona near the famous promenade or Rambla.

  As an apprentice, I had to keep the shop clean, run errands and return to their rightful places all those tools which the shop assistants left out on the counters after they had shown them to prospective clients. Gradually, the dreariness of the routine and the hard work involved in having to sweep out such huge premises every day undermined my show of bravado. I gave up my job.

  I decided I wanted to read for an arts degree and began to spend hours in my father’s library. In particular, I was fascinated by the origins of words and spent my days perusing book after book. It was during this period that my appendix burst and I was rushed into the hospital, as I have already explained. When I had recovered from the operation, I decided not to read for an arts degree after all, but to become a chicken farmer. I made up my mind to enter the Royal Poultry School at Arenys de Mar as soon as I was well enough.

  It was 1931, General Primo de Rivera’s long dictatorship had ended and a new government had been sworn in under General Berenguer, who had promised democracy and municipal elections.

  Most of the large cities voted Republican, but in the country people voted overwhelmingly in favour of the Monarchist Party. Despite being in the minority, the Republicans claimed a victory because they had gained the cities and the provincial capitals. To avoid bloodshed, King Alfonso XIII left the country, but without formally abdicating. Power was then transferred into the hands of the centrist leader of the Republic, Niceto Alcalá Zamora.

  All I could make out from the tangled web of proclamations, announcements and acclamations that followed was that Spain’s stability was swiftly coming to an end. It seemed to me that those who had endured a dictatorship backed by the king were now in revolt against the prevailing judicial and national unity. My father had a premonition that hard days were looming over the horizon for his countrymen, which worried him greatly. However, as fate would have it, he never knew what followed, for he died a few months after the birth of the Second Republic in 1931.

  His death left a great vacuum in the family, and the flight of his soul from the world left me oppressed and overwhelmed, my heart gripped by deep sorrow. I had lost the one I loved most, for ever. His coffin was borne on the shoulders of his factory workers and accompanied by some of the patients from the Saint John of God Hospital for Sick Children, to which he had been a great benefactor. Many other mourners also followed this kind and generous man to his body’s last resting place. Fifty years after his death, I feel that providence had been right to remove him from the scene before he could see the tribulation and suffering which his beloved country was to suffer.

  After I had finished training to be a poultry farmer, it was time for me to report to barracks for compulsory military service. In those days it was possible for a conscript to buy himself out after serving for six months. This scheme, known as the Fee-Paying Military Service Scheme, had the additional advantage that those who joined it could spend their nights at home. Moreover, if a recruit took all the necessary military training courses and studied hard during those six months, he was allowed to graduate with a star as a second lieutenant.

  I decided to join the scheme and so avoid some of the more onerous chores of military life. I was drafted into the Seventh Regiment of Light Artillery, which had its barracks near Barcelona’s harbour, in the drassanes or old dockyard area. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a cavalry regiment so I had to learn to ride. The captain who taught us was extremely harsh, so that I returned to barracks more than once with my buttocks on fire. The accepted cure for this was to apply a cloth to the raw part that had been soaked in vinegar and sprinkled with salt; when I did this, it made me see all the stars in the firmament. Such tough training left me with little love for the cavalry by the time I had won my spurs. I ended my military service without any enthusiasm whatsoever for my companions or my mount; I lacked those essential qualities of loyalty, generosity and honour that the cavalryman is meant to possess; I had no desire to stay in the army.

  I was lucky not to have been called upon to quell any civil disturbances while doing my national service. In January 1933 anarchists took over the village of Casas Viejas near Cádiz and were ruthlessly put down by the security forces at the instigation of Manuel Azaña Diaz’s left-wing government: fourteen prisoners were shot. All our leave was cancelled, but thankfully it was too far away from Catalonia for us to be sent there.

  In October 1934 there was a revolt in Asturias, which was put down by the then centre-right government. After that, transitions from one government to another were swift. Bad news travelled around the country even faster. Every day newspapers reported more violent deaths. Passions were unl
eashed in bloody fashion. Debates in Parliament degenerated into insults and diatribes; politicians quarrelled endlessly among themselves. One day a right-wing faction sitting outside a coffee-bar would be machine-gunned; the next day it was the turn of the Left. Shots were exchanged daily. To make matters worse, governments took part in reprisals, lashed their opponents and claimed powers never granted them by the constitution. The police force, swamped by endless acts of private retaliation, ended up contravening the laws themselves. Finally, there came a black day in the annals of the country, 18 July 1936, an ill-fated date that changed the course of Spanish history, for it saw the beginning of a bloody civil war.

  3

  Civil War

  There is no joy comparable to that of regaining one’s lost freedom.

  Cervantes

  I have stumbled across dictatorships all too often during my life, albeit with different characteristics and aims; it almost seems as though they were following me around. Perhaps in trying to avoid them I have inevitably strayed into their orbits. Fortunately, I have never had any personal misadventures with such regimes because I have been careful never to give cause for anyone to take action against me. Let me emphasise, once again, my apolitical stance. This does not mean that I have no interest in politics, which are inevitably all around us; indeed, politics are so much part of our everyday life that they even turn up in our soup, as we say in Spain. When I say I am apolitical I mean, if I may make myself absolutely clear, that I have never belonged to any political party, nor have I ever given a penny to further the cause of any of them. I have never held a party membership card, nor do I feel strongly about any specific faction or group.