Miguel Piernavieja del Pozo

Miguel Piernavieja del Pozo
In this Spanish name, the first or paternal surname is Piernavieja.

Miguel Piernavieja del Pozo (21 May 1916 – 8 June 1983)[1] was a Spanish spy for Nazi Germany, operating in Britain during the Second World War. He was quickly spotted by the Security Services (MI5) who gave him the codename Pogo and used one of their double-agents to feed him disinformation which was relayed to the Germans.

Spanish Civil War

Born in Santa Cruz de Tenerife on 21 May 1916,[1] Piernavieja was a Falangist who had worked for Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War.[2][3]

Spying in Britain

In 1940,[4] the British Embassy in Madrid, with the personal recommendation of British ambassador Samuel Hoare, arranged for Piernavieja to travel to Britain as an observer for a Madrid-based study group.[5][6] He arrived in Britain on 29 September 1940.[2][7] Piernavieja was contacted by Gwylm Williams, who had tried to work for the Germans in 1939 but had been recruited as a double-agent by MI5 instead.[8][9] Williams posed as an ardent Welsh nationalist and Piernavieja gave him £3900 (a sum more than 10x the average annual wage[10]) in a talcum-powder tin and asked him to obtain information on the Welsh nationalist movement and on factories making munitions in the west of England. According to Williams, Piernavieja had asked him to make plans for sabotage.[2]

War service

Piernavieja was awarded the Iron Cross for his military service in the Division Azul on the Eastern Front.[8] He returned to Spain in January 1941.[7]

Selected publications

  • El Deporte en la Literatura Latina. Madrid, 1960.

References

  1. ^ a b Real Academia de la Historia. Diccionario Biográfico Español. Santa Cruz de Tenerife 21.V.1916 – Madrid 8.VI.1983
  2. ^ a b c Burns, Jimmy (2011). Papa Spy: A True Story of Love, Wartime Espionage in Madrid, and the Treachery of the Cambridge Spies. London: Bloomsbury. p. 177. ISBN 978-1-4088-2773-4.
  3. ^ Oppenheimer, Walter (1 November 2009). "Anacletos de Franco". El País. Retrieved 10 January 2015.
  4. ^ "MI5 found dissolute Spaniard all too easy to deceive." David Sanderson, The Times, 24 October 2014. Retrieved 10 January 2015. (subscription required)
  5. ^ Hennessey, Thomas (1 January 1904). Spooks: The Unofficial History of MI5 from Agent Zig Zag to the D-Day Deception 1939-45. Amberley Publishing Limited. pp. 97–99. ISBN 978-1-4456-0800-6.
  6. ^ Moreno Cantano, Antonio César (2012). "Propaganda y espionaje franquista en Gran Bretaña durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial" [Francoist propaganda and espionage in Britain during World War II] (PDF). Ecléctica, Revista de estudios culturales (in Spanish). 1: 81–91. ISSN 2254-0113. Retrieved 10 January 2015.
  7. ^ a b "Un espía canario en Londres". La Provincia – Diario de las Palmas (in Spanish). Retrieved 10 January 2015.
  8. ^ a b The National Archives. "Miguel Piernavieja del Pozo, aliases Pogo, Pojo (2/10/1940-09/11/1945)". German Intelligence Agents and suspected agents. Retrieved 10 January 2015.
  9. ^ Andrew, Christopher M. (June 2010). The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5. Penguin. pp. 259–261. ISBN 978-0-14-102330-4.
  10. ^ Field, Geoffrey G. (2011). Blood, Sweat, and Toil: Remaking the British Working Class, 1939–1945. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 120. ISBN 978-0-19-960411-1.
  • Piernavieja, Miguel, ed. (1959). "Estudios deportivos". Citius Altius Fortius. 1. Madrid. Retrieved 10 January 2015.


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