He has been a spy.
Agent of the intelligence service.
Surely there are secrets he won’t confide in me.
No, out of responsibility.
But tell me one that I can.
The Russian generals, if they drink, sing you Spanish folk songs.
How is it?
Transmitted by Spanish Republicans who dealt with Soviet military.
Did you drink with them?
Yes. They drink like Cossacks! “Let’s break the glasses!”, they told me afterwards: it’s easy to sympathize with Russians if you’re Spanish.
How does the Russian army look today?
Feud with the KGB. They don’t even look at each other during the parades.
Is it the same between our domes?
Our intelligence transcends successive governments in favor of the common good.
What is a spy?
Each of the women and men who work in silence and are not valued by anyone.
They work on… what?
Observing everything and obtaining information to indicate to the ruler where he will get bad data.
And the ruler does not appreciate it, he tells me.
It’s just that the ruler doesn’t even pay attention to it. Hitler, Roosevelt, Bush didn’t…
Is being a spy vocational?
My vocation was to help Spaniards live together and reconciled in a democracy. I entered the Zaragoza Military Academy with this mentality.
Where did that idea come from?
From my family And from Mr. Formes, a school teacher in Artesa de Segre, where I grew up: “The fault of the Civil War is ours, for not having taught how to dialogue and reach agreements”, he told us one day in the classroom .
And that marked him?
Yes. It is a lifelong learning. And we knew how to take a giant step with the transition.
You defend her, right?
I was born at the end of the Civil War, in 1939, and from a young age I understood: our future demanded a transition from dictatorship to democracy. And I contributed to it.
With?
After finishing my military training, I was recruited by the intelligence service that was then born. From there I studied the still underground political parties…
He spied, speaking clearly.
In order to prepare for the transition: I gave talks to our army officers about plurality. I was carrying a dodecahedron…
A twelve-sided geometric figure?
On each face I painted a different color or sign. Thus I taught that the valuable thing was the polyhedron – Spain –, above the various colors or signs on each face.
good service
Collective merit and of those political leaders of the time, of all!: they knew how to dialogue, reach consensus and agree.
There’s more anti-politics now, huh?
The worst thing is to present yourself as a Moses who will lead us to the promised land: it is a dangerous attitude, which usually ends in blood.
But blood was shed during the transition: the murders of ETA, the GAL…
“Blood doesn’t make roads, it makes puddles”: we sent octaves with phrases like this to old people and their relatives.
Really? And did that work?
ETA dynamized dialogue and democracy, and police and judges were insufficient: we infiltrated terrorist commandos with the aim of encouraging the desertion of ETAs still without blood crimes.
That’s intelligence, no doubt!
And many old people took advantage of the Protected Exile program: we sent them abroad under a new identity.
To the fleeing enemy, silver bridge!
Credit to our field agents infiltrating old commandos… We thus dismantled lots of weapons and money.
Great service, again – thank you!
Democracy deserved it. I was thinking of my father, an admirer of Ángel Pestaña, whose anarchist José Antonio once said: “Este tío es bueno”.
Why was he thinking about his father?
He narrowly escaped being shot and remained silent. The family trauma I needed to overcome with collective dialogue.
And what did your father say to you when he found out that you wanted to be in the military?
He told me: “No one lives in this house who fires a shotgun.” And I had to work to pay for my studies.
Did his father come to understand him?
He attended an event in which I was distinguished and a captain congratulated him on my merits, and then he said to me: “This being a soldier is important.” The father had understood.
What had I understood?
That his son would not use the country, but would serve his country, to all Spaniards alike. And that was the important thing.
