Operation Garbo (2 page)

M
y first forty years were full of adventure and I have found it very interesting to put them down on paper, but I would like first to ask for the reader’s understanding and sympathy, for I am neither subtle nor learned. I agree with the Roman philosopher who said, ‘All I know is that I know nothing’; my aim is simply to tell the story of my life.

I was born on 14 February 1912 in Barcelona, in the city which they call ‘the Unrivalled’. In those days Barcelona was still trying to recover from the bitter memories of the
Setmana
Tràgica
, that Tragic Week in 1909 when radicals, socialists and anarchists collaborated in organising a strike during which churches, homes and convents were burnt and political
agitators
and demagogues incited the people to take to the streets, unleashing a week of rioting. Although the authorities soon restored order, unrest still lay close to the surface and, during my childhood, Barcelona was the scene of frequent street battles, strikes, attempts on people’s lives and
revolutionary
coups. Every morning, when my father left for work, he would say goodbye to us as if for the last time; each parting was heartrending.

We lived in the first-floor flat at 70 Carrer Muntaner near the corner of Arago Street. At that time the Madrid-
Saragossa-Alicante
railway line ran in a deep cutting along Arago Street to Barcelona’s main station. I never tired of peering through
the railings to watch the powerful steam engines hissing by with their endless wagons and carriages. My imagination would travel with them as they sped away to remote destinations to the echoing sound of a whistle. I dreamed of getting to know the world and am convinced that my passionate enthusiasm for travel stems from those years of living so close to the
railway
line. Later, as our social standing improved, we moved to grander houses, but I missed the trains which had so stimulated my fantasies about far-off countries and unknown lands.

My mother was called Mercedes García. From the
photographs
I still have of her as a young woman, it is clear that she had been very good-looking. She came from Motril, a town in the southern province of Granada, and all her life she preserved the lilting yet elegant stride of an Andalusian. She kept her fine figure, and to see her walk down the street when she was nearing seventy and had snow-white hair, one would have taken her for forty.

As her parents had brought her to Barcelona when she was only eight, she spoke Catalan without a trace of an accent and used it constantly at home, resorting to Castilian only when we had visitors. She loved all things Catalan: the songs, the music, the dances and the idiosyncrasies of the people. But although the atmosphere at home was so strongly Catalan, neither my parents nor anyone else felt the sting of separatism for we were first and foremost Spaniards.

Sometimes my mother would tell us about her childhood in Motril, a town with seven sugar mills which lay in a
beautiful
, fertile valley covered in huge plantations of waving sugar cane. She would tell us about the town’s festivals, its home-made sweets, the famous
torta real
or royal pie, the delicious
pan de aceite
bread which substitutes oil for lard, the ring-shaped rolls and tropical fruits. Her parents were strict Catholics who received Holy Communion every day, a show of piety which their
neighbours
considered to be excessively sanctimonious. My mother was, therefore, brought up in an austere atmosphere of
considerable
harshness. Her rigid attitudes remained with her even after her marriage, and she stayed an unyielding disciplinarian with a relentlessly Christian outlook to the end of her life.

My father, Juan Pujol, was a Catalan through and through. His family came from Olot, a town near La Garrotxa in the province of Girona, but they later moved to Barcelona where my father was born and went to school. Goethe once said: ‘Talent is shaped in seclusion and character in the torrent of the world.’ My father had no chance of studying in seclusion, but his character was certainly shaped in the daily struggle to earn his keep. By dint of saving and working hard, he was able to set up his own little factory and eventually it became the most important dye-house in Barcelona, well known for the superb black it produced.

My parents had four children. First came my brother Joaquin, a sturdy, straightforward character whose favourite hobbies were photography and stamp collecting. He was followed two years later by my sister Buenaventura, who still is, and always has been, a true second mother to me. I was born two years after her and then came my younger sister Elena. All of us followed Spanish custom and called ourselves by our Christian names, followed by our father’s surname of Pujol, followed by our mother’s surname of García. We were considered what they, in the beleaguered Barcelona of those days, called a well-to-do family. Far removed from the risk of poverty, we did not have to worry about our daily needs; we lacked nothing, not even the pleasures for which we would have yearned, had we not had them.

My father deserves a very special mention; indeed he almost warrants a whole chapter to himself, for to write about him is to understand my subsequent actions. He was my progenitor, the head of the family; he saw to my everyday needs and to my moral upbringing, and he instilled in me, by instruction and advice, the attitudes and ideas, the very spirit that made me. Step by step, throughout my childhood and early youth, his precepts guided and taught me.

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?