The bunkers of the Strait that Franco never released

Larissa Swirski and Gabriel Riera probably never met, although the two coexisted, or rather survived, in that dangerous and intriguing setting that was the Strait of Gibraltar during World War II. She, like the Queen of Hearts, a double agent for the Nazis and the allies, in the Campo Gibraltarian espionage network that the English dubbed Spy row. He, as a prisoner forced to eat crushed snails so as not to die of starvation, while he was digging the enormous tunnel that crosses the Sierra Carbonera and that was to serve for an offensive by the Germans against the Rock that never materialized. Although official world history dwells on other feats, a tense and discreet battle was fought in Cádiz in the early 1940s. More than 640 bunkers and various military infrastructures, stranded and abandoned today along the Cadiz coast, speak of that Strait of frustrated military operations, spies and cruel battalions of prisoners.

Bunkers of various types, batteries, anti-aircraft guns, powder magazines, command posts, tunnels and even a highway in Algeciras hidden behind strange screens are living witnesses of that kind of war without shots that was fought in one of the essential geostrategic nodes of the world. All these constructions that extend along the entire maritime border of the province of Cádiz, from the limits with Huelva to Málaga, are part of the so-called Plan of Fortifications of the Southern Border, devised by the artillery brigadier general Pedro Jevenois Labernade since May 1939. Just before the Second World War, the Francoist soldier studied a fortification and artillery plan that, officially, would only serve to defend the country against possible incursions by the allied bloc. “We are talking about a very serious project. Together with the system of fortifications on the Pyrenees line [the so-called Line P, which built 6,000 bunkers between 1944 and 1948], they are the great defensive constructions of the moment”, assesses Alfonso Escuadra, an expert in Cádiz buildings and the historical context that surrounded them.

But, no matter how much Francoism insisted on arguing that the fortifications of the Strait were only intended to protect the country, none of the actors at that time of war escaped that whoever controlled the Strait and the Suez Canal would have the keys to the Mediterranean. Hence, from the beginning of 1940 and in a few months, the regime raised a fortified line, especially more numerous and reinforced in areas surrounding Gibraltar, such as La Línea de la Concepción with a hidden plan. "All the elements of the artillery system and observatories also have an offensive nuance," adds Escuadra. That is precisely why, that same year, Nazi Germany included the bunkers of the Strait as key locations for its Operation Felix, the plan with which Hitler intended to invade Gibraltar in January 1941.

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“There are those who still think that an agreement was not reached at the Hendaye meeting [held between Franco and Hitler in October 1940 to discuss Spain's entry into the war], but that is not the case (…). The fortifications were used as a game element in the negotiations”, points out Escuadra. In fact, the researcher from Línea has located secret documents in the German Bundesarchiv in which the Nazi general Hubert Lanz assures that the Spanish State had “delivered several bunkers located in La Línea”. Escuadra goes further and, contrary to what historiography had defended until recently, it is clear that the plan to invade Gibraltar had much more active participation from Francoism. But the preparations for the taking of the Rock ended up going awry, overlapping with the operation for the German occupation of the USSR, first, and with the change of luck from one side to another —from the axis to that of the allies—, later.

A discreet war

All these frustrated operations and high-level negotiations resulted on the ground, in the Campo de Gibraltar, in spy intrigues in favor of one side or the other —and even double, like Swirski, with an exciting life documented by journalist Wayne Jamison—, suffering and death. If it was possible for the Franco dictatorship to erect more than 640 defensive constructions in just months, it was due to the fact that the State resorted to private contractors, military labor and, above all, thousands of prisoners forced to participate in extremely harsh forced labor. . The historian José Manuel Algarbani has recorded, from May 1939 to 1944, up to 43 disciplinary units. "We know about the case of the Valley of the Fallen, where there were up to 20,000 prisoners, but here there were 30,000 and it is hardly known," reflects the expert. “We have lived under the ideal that Spain has not participated in the Second World War, that they tell the residents of La Línea that they attended an Italian bombing by mistake [on July 11, 1941, which produced five deaths] of Gibraltar”, says the journalist and researcher of that period Juan José Téllez.

When the humid easterly wind from the Strait mixes with the mist, the Rock of Gibraltar vanishes behind a trompe l'oeil of white clouds. The absence of the Rock from the embrasures of the bunkers of the Sierra Carbonera —a mountain to the north of the colony with an altitude of just over 300 meters— seems paradoxical just by contemplating a landscape of low scrub full of concrete buildings . "This is only a part, in San Roque [the mountain is the limit between La Línea and this town] we have a bunker for every square kilometer, there are more than 180 just in the municipality," says Carlos Jordan, municipal technician for Tourism and responsible for some cultural routes through these buildings. Going through that succession of abandoned rooms, galleries that go up, remains of the prison camp and the enormous tunnel that crosses the hill from end to end is unsettling, just thinking about the suffering and deaths that it entailed.

The Majorcan Gabriel Riera was one of those prisoners who documented his experience in Crònica d’un presoner mallorquí als camps de concentració (1936-1942): “One day an inspection came with a health colonel. They made those who were left of the company line up, there weren't many of us anymore, and, when crossing the wire net, he blurts out: 'This is a cemetery of living men!' The lack of food, diseases, accidents and work shifts of more than ten hours caused the death of at least 500 prisoners, according to Algarbani's quantification. They were deaths in vain to build a fortified line that, although it was endowed with personnel and weapons, never opened fire and fell into disuse as soon as the Franco regime saw that it was not going to serve either to attack or defend itself against the allies.

Today they barely subsist as megaliths stranded along a coastline that remained largely natural and wild thanks to those military needs in the area. Wrapped in cumbersome administrative conditions and property ownership, there is not even a consensus on how many there are. In 2001, Escuadra and Ángel Sáez produced a catalog for the Ministry of Culture of the Junta de Andalucía in which they documented some 500 buildings, but the former believes that there could be more. Jordán, supported by other subsequent studies, raises the number of buildings to more than 640, for which he requests protection as assets of cultural interest (BIC) that the Board promised in September 2019. Consulted by EL PAÍS, the Ministry of Culture He has not specified whether he will make that specific statement and only ensures that "the bunkers, as they are part of the defensive architecture, are considered BIC in application of Law 16/1985 on Heritage."

Algarbani and Escuadra, each in their own way, have spent decades trying to rescue buildings from oblivion, located in powerful natural spaces with unquestionable tourist value. The first, eager for their role as places of historical memory to be recognized: "We must explain how they were built and for what, that they are places of memory, and try not to destroy them anymore." And Escuadra goes further: “In two decades they will be 100 years old and they tell us about our own history. And it is not local, it places the area in the context of the great European and world history”.