‘Against the Grain’: Special Operations Executive in Spain, 1941–45

Abstract

This article surveys the activities of Special Operations Executive in Spain during the course of the Second World War. Under the constraints of a foreign policy that sought to gradually encourage the regime of General Francisco Franco to become more resolutely neutral rather than pro-Axis and ‘non-belligerent’, SOE nonetheless entered Spain with the hopes of developing a series of contacts with groups and individuals that could be turned into an active Resistance if Spain joined the Axis, or if Nazi Germany either invaded or occupied the Iberian Peninsula. Once the possibility of an Axis landing in Spain was decisively dismissed, SOE had to break away from its mandate to ‘set Europe ablaze’ and find a new role. In Spain, the successful development of SOE's intelligence gathering capabilities in the economic sphere, especially in the Allied campaign against German wolfram smuggling, provided the organization with a purpose that definitely went ‘against the grain’ when compared to activities in other regions and countries.