Franco's most shocking event in Maspalomas

The Franco regime facilitated the clandestine resupply of Nazi submarines in the port of La Luz, in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, during World War II and even the transport of torpedoes to the islands for them on a Spanish Navy ship. , despite its neutrality. One of the most shocking episodes was the sinking of a Nazi submarine in what is now Maspalomas Costa Canaria. The history of the Nazi submarines in the Canary Islands has been shrouded in legend for years, almost always associated with the supposed base for the U-boats that the German businessman Gustav Winter would have built on the Jandía peninsula (Fuerteventura).

However, the professor of Contemporary History at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (ULPGC) Juan José Díaz Benítez has just published three articles in international magazines related to navigation in which he defends that this legend around Winter is not credible. and that the supply bases were located in the large ports, mainly in La Luz. The complicity of the Franco dictatorship with the activity of the Nazi submarines in the Canary Islands is extracted by this historian from two other events: in July 1941 a Spanish Navy ship, the "Contramaestre Casado", transported eight torpedoes for the German ships in Las Palmas, and the local authorities helped remove the crew of the submarine U-167 from the country, sunk by its commander just five kilometers from Maspalomas on April 6, 1943, after having suffered an attack by British aircraft.

The sinking of U-167 had been so hasty, at only 22 meters deep, that its crew did not have time to destroy all its secret elements first. To the point that six months later, a local fisherman returned to the coast of Gran Canaria with a cipher machine "captured" from that wreck. That whole story ended when British complaints (and threats) intensified and, above all, when the Allies took French Morocco, which made it easier for their planes to have bases to exercise close surveillance over the Canary Islands.

For Benítez, an expert on Spanish-German collaboration during World War II, he dismisses the conjectures built up for decades around the German businessman and the supposed Fuerteventura submarine base with a document from the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW, High Command of the Armed Forces) itself. ), in which he complains to one of the leaders of the Nazi regime, Hermann Göring, about Gustav Winter's activities in Fuerteventura.

The OKW tells Göring that Winter is drawing the attention of British espionage and endangers the Etappenorganisation: the true secret supply network of the German Navy, organized since the First World War and which already had active bases in the 1930s. in the port of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, with the manager of the Woerman house, Walter Vogel, at the helm, and in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, directed by consul Jacob Ahlers.

"If Gustav Winter had been a Vm (Vertrauenmann, a trusted man) of the Etappe Kanaren (the supply network in the Canary Islands), it would have been enough to order him directly through the naval attaché to suspend his work in Jandía," he adds. Where was the main supply infrastructure for the German submarines in the Canary Islands, then? In the port of La Luz, in the capital of Gran Canaria, he had received instructions to prepare to provide supplies to the U-Boats on August 15, 1939; that is, 15 days before the Nazis invaded Poland and the United Kingdom and France declared war on them.

In these three articles in "Mariner's Mirror", "International Journal of Maritime History" and "Anuario de Estudios Atlánticos", Díaz Benítez provides documents taken mostly from German military archives that demonstrate that, between January 30, 1940 and September 25, 1942, 23 German submarines loaded supplies in Spanish ports (Cádiz, Vigo, El Ferrol and Las Palmas), despite the theoretical neutrality of the Franco regime: 1.508 tons of diesel, 37 of heavy oil and 10 torpedoes. These works by the ULPGC professor focus on the Canarian ports, the first to join the Kriegsmarine supply network. Díaz Benítez specifies that the activities of the submarines in the Canary Islands were not decisive for the outcome of the war, since the main theater of the Atlantic battle was much further north, between the Azores and Iceland, but they did seek to weaken the British position. in West Africa.

And, above all, they reveal the tolerance (if not complicity) of the Franco regime with these operations of the German Armed Forces until the course of the war began to turn the tables in favor of the Allies, which had consequences in the form of " more misery and hunger" for the population, because London redoubled its economic pressure on Spain and made it much more difficult for food and fuel to enter the country, this expert points out. When the war broke out, Germany already had four oil tankers positioned in the ports of the Canary Islands with 21.810 tons of diesel and 16.100 tons of fuel, three of them assigned to the submarines. Its first activities were, however, providing fuel and supplies, sometimes imported from Argentina, to the Kriegsmarine supply ships and to the "blockade cheaters", German ships that were trying to return to ports in their country or France. occupied, such as the "Amasis" and the "Chemnitz", which inaugurated the route in 1939. Seven others followed.

However, the supply to the U-boats was not carried out directly by the tankers, but by a steamer discreetly enabled for its new function, the "Corrientes", which debuted by helping the Italian submarine resupply in the port of La Luz. Capellini", after British surveillance prevented it from supplying the U-37 and U-43 in February 1941. Between March 3 and 5, 1941, on three consecutive nights, the "Corrientes" transferred 166 tons of fuel for the submarines U-124, U-105 and U-106; On June 24 and 30 she provided 111 tons to U-123 and U-69; and on July 5 she supplied 54 tons to U-103. And all this, within the port of La Luz.

Were these operations, which violated Spain's neutrality status, carried out behind the Franco regime's back? Díaz Benítez believes the opposite: "without Spanish collaboration," he argues, it would have been impossible to act in the port of La Luz, but the archives also contain radio telegrams from the Ministry of the Navy to the naval commander of the Canary Islands announcing the arrival of the submarines and the largest reserve being ordered, as well as responses from the latter confirming the supplies. The complicity of the Franco dictatorship with the activity of the Nazi submarines in the Canary Islands is extracted by this historian from two other events: in July 1941 a Spanish Navy ship, the "Contramaestre Casado", transported eight torpedoes for the German ships in Las Palmas, and the local authorities helped remove the crew of the submarine U-167 from the country, sunk by its commander just five kilometers from Maspalomas on April 6, 1943, after having suffered an attack by British aircraft. The crew of U-167 was not detained by the Spanish authorities, as required by international regulations, but escaped on the night of the 12th to the 13th from the port of La Luz on board a Woermann tugboat, which transported it to another submarine. that was waiting to pick her up a few kilometers out to sea, the U-455.

IN THIS LINK YOU CAN CONTINUE TO KNOW THE HISTORY THROUGH THE BLOG HISTORY OF CASTILLO DEL ROMERAL.