Spanish Civil War
In 1931, Pujol did his six months of compulsory military service in a cavalry unit, the 7th Regiment of Light Artillery. He knew he was unsuited for a military career, hating horse-riding and claiming to lack the "...essential qualities of loyalty, generosity and honor".
Pujol was managing a poultry farm north of Barcelona in 1936 when the Spanish Civil War began. His sister Elana's fiancé was taken by Republican forces, and later she and his mother were arrested and accused of being counter-revolutionaries. A relative in a trade union was able to rescue them from captivity.
He was called up for service on the Republican side but opposed the Republican government due to their treatment of his family. He hid at the home of his girlfriend, but was captured in a police raid and imprisoned for a week, before being freed via the resistance group Socorro Blanco. They hid him until they could produce fake identity papers that showed him to be too old for military service.
He started managing a poultry farm that had been requisitioned by the local Republican government, but it was not economically viable. The experience with rule by committee soured him on Communism further.
He re-joined the Republican side using the false papers with the intention to desert as soon as possible, volunteering to lay telegraph cables near the front lines. He managed to desert to the Nationalist side during the Battle of the Ebro in September 1938. However, he was equally ill-treated by the Nationalist side, disliking their fascist influences and being struck and imprisoned by his colonel upon Pujol's expressing sympathy with the monarchy.
His experience with both sides left him with a deep loathing of both fascism and communism, and by extension Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. He was proud that he had managed to serve both sides without firing a single bullet for either. After his discharge from the Nationalist army, he met his future first wife, Araceli Gonzalez, in Burgos and married her in Madrid; they had one child, Juan Fernando.
Read more about this topic: Joan Pujol Garcia
Famous quotes containing the words civil war, spanish, civil and/or war:
“One of the greatest difficulties in civil war is, that more art is required to know what should be concealed from our friends, than what ought to be done against our enemies.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“It’s like a jumble of huts in a jungle somewhere. I don’t understand how you can live there. It’s really, completely dead. Walk along the street, there’s nothing moving. I’ve lived in small Spanish fishing villages which were literally sunny all day long everyday of the week, but they weren’t as boring as Los Angeles.”
—Truman Capote (1924–1984)
“If we love-and-serve an ideal we reach backward in time to its inception and forward to its consummation. To grow is sometimes to hurt; but who would return to smallness?”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 3, ch. 3 (1962)
“Those wars are unjust which are undertaken without provocation. For only a war waged for revenge or defense can be just.”
—Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 B.C.)