The British Security Service (MI5) admits it on their website: "The Rock of Gibraltar was the setting for one of the most fascinating Intelligence battles of World War II." The struggle between the Allies and the Axis powers in southern Spain and northern Morocco can never compete with the stunning epic of D-Day or the atomic bombing of Japan. Nor with the symbolic resonance of Stalingrad or Midway. However, the events that took place in the first half of the 1940s in the waters of the Strait were crucial to the outcome of the conflict. Although Franco's regime kept them hidden for three decades, and despite the entertainment industry not dedicating a series, a video game, or a graphic novel to it. Not yet.
"It was a close call that could have changed the course of the war significantly," confirms journalist and writer Wayne Jamison (Rota, Cádiz, 55 years old). "If Operation Felix had been carried out just a bit, the outcome would have been different. In fact, the British had already assumed this. Hermann Göring [founder of the Gestapo and commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe] admitted in the interrogations prior to the Nuremberg trials that the great mistake of the Third Reich was not carrying out that operation. Hitler thought the same," he comments regarding the Nazi plan to seize such a strategic enclave as the rock, which would have allowed them to dominate the western Mediterranean after occupying continental Europe.
The documentation that MI5 began declassifying exactly 20 years ago has shed light on the role played by the southern region in the conflict. Gibraltar and also Algeciras, Ceuta, Tetouan, and Tangier formed a relevant theater of operations in relation to sabotage actions and espionage and counter-espionage. "The difference from other battles is that this one was quieter and more insidious, as it was not related to military force but to information control. For example, regarding the entries and exits of ships and submarines. Whoever had that information had a lot to gain. Just to give you an idea, secret services from up to seven different countries, including Japan, operated in the area simultaneously," adds Jamison, who considers himself "a geek" of the second great global confrontation. "I always say that here was involved the crème de la crème of 20th-century espionage. It's hard to find a big name that didn't work in the area then: Kim Philby, Lionel Crabb, Wilhelm Canaris... and Ian Fleming. The only field assignment given to the creator of James Bond was precisely this one. Everything passed through and was cooked in the Strait."
In a context where information was traded for money rather than ideological affiliations, where a wrong move could cost anyone who wasn't sharp enough their neck, Larissa Swirski moved better than anyone. That's why her nickname still resonates today as if she were a pop superstar: Queen of Hearts. In Spanish, Reina de corazones.
But who was Larissa Swirski? How did she manage to infiltrate the tangle of names and crossed interests pulled by the British, Germans, Spaniards, and llanitos? What benefit did she get from that political-military entanglement? Wayne Jamison and Liana Romero, Swirski's daughter, bring her adventures back from oblivion in the fictionalized biography Queen of Hearts (Edhasa). A true story - with a touch of fiction - based on Romero's memories and supported by Jamison's research.
The mission that proved the Nazis were not invincible: "It was a risky bet that shouldn't have succeeded"
Let's start with the memories, as they come from a very direct source. "They have said about me that I was the youngest spy in history. An exaggeration? I don't think so, although, like almost everything in this life, the statement requires an explanation, because my work, as seen, consisted more than anything in serving as a cover for my mother in some of her operations," evokes Romero in the epilogue, who as a child got used to accompanying the Queen of Hearts to take incognito photos with her Minox. Now, at 92 years old and after keeping the secret all her life, she wanted to share it. Primarily, to highlight the role of women in World War II. "A war - she writes - that transformed the world and in which it sometimes seems that only men participated. Or, at least, that the only heroes deserving recognition and a place in history were men. And that was not the case. There were also many heroines."
On the other hand, the research of the journalist from Cádiz in the National Archives of the United Kingdom, in the files of the former Spanish Information Service, and in the facilities in Berlin that preserve documentation on the KO Spanien - the branch of military Intelligence (Abwehr) for which Swirski worked - has allowed to verify two issues. One, the true identity of the Queen of Hearts, after decades of believing that a distant niece of Churchill had operated under the alias. And two, her status as a triple agent: Swirski collaborated simultaneously with Germany, the United Kingdom, and Spain. She was, therefore, the only spy who played this impossible chess game on national territory. And the pawn that questions Spain's supposed neutrality in World War II. At least in terms of information, Franco did not hesitate to assist Hitler and Mussolini's envoys. "At that time, a Spanish military officer had the order to provide Germans and Italians with whatever was necessary," emphasizes Jamison. All this, in return for the support of Nazis and fascists to the rebel side in the Civil War.
Larissa Swirski descended from a bastard branch of the Romanovs. Her family belonged to the boyar nobility, related to Tsar Nicholas II. She grew up in Odessa and arrived in Spain fleeing the Bolshevik Revolution (1917) after passing through Germany, where she coincided on a film set with Marlene Dietrich, and France, where she met Salvador Dalí and the Sevillian sailor Manuel Romero Hume, whom she married in 1931. He ended up being the officer in charge of the Naval Aid Office in Puente Mayorga, an observation point located a stone's throw from Gibraltar. "From beginning to end, Larissa had a movie-like life," summarizes the journalist, who was contacted by Liana Romero after one of the presentations of his previous novel: The Shadow of the Führer (Círculo Rojo, 2017).