Greene ‘used novel to spy on Spain’
An academic claims the author passed details of his boozy travels to his exemployer MI6, writes Isambard Wilkinson in Madrid.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s Graham Greene would travel around Spain in a car loaded with wine in the company of a local priest called Leopoldo Duran. The fruit of his many journeys was the novel Monsignor Quixote, set in the aftermath of Franco’s dictatorship.
A lesser known purpose of the trips, according to a new book, was to spy on terrorist groups and left-wing parties on behalf of Her Majesty’s secret service.
Greene, who worked for British intelligence during World
War II, visited Spain frequently from 1976 and throughout the 1980s, making journeys that inspired and provided material for Monsignor Quixote.
A recently published book written by Carlos Villar, a professor of literature at the University of La Rioja, which painstakingly reconstructs Greene’s 15 trips to Spain, suggests that the author used the visits to gather information on Eta terrorists in the Basque Country and the rise of socialist politics after the death of Franco in 1975.
‘‘My hypothesis is that from November 1975 Greene was very interested in observing postFranco Spain,’’ Villar said. ‘‘It was his modus operandi to turn up in politically volatile countries at critical moments – like he did in Haiti, Vietnam and Mexico – maintaining a low profile.’’
His journeys with Duran, who would become Greene’s frequent travel companion and friend and who was the model for the main character in Greene’s novel, took him to the restive Basque region. ‘‘Greene often had meetings around this time with his friend, the director of MI6, Maurice Oldfield, at a moment when British intelligence was probing links between Basque terrorism and the IRA in Northern Ireland,’’ Villar said.
‘‘I am not suggesting Greene was like James Bond. He was over 70 years old at the time, but he may well have passed information about conditions in Spain to British intelligence,’’ Villar said. He added that in his private letters the author expressed reluctance to travel to Spain and sometimes referred to his trips as ‘‘missions’’. His obsession with going unnoticed angered Duran, who described the journeys in his diaries.
Villar also pointed to Greene’s meeting in 1980 with a leading Socialist party politician, Tierno Galvan, the mayor of Madrid, with whom he formed a friendship. Greene also tried to meet Santiago Carrillo, the Spanish communist leader.
‘‘This was Greene’s classic way of operating: to approach leftwing leaders and befriend them,’’ Villar said. He cited Greene’s friendships with Latin American leaders such as Fidel Castro, Salvador Allende and the Panamanian revolutionary General Omar Torrijos.
Greene, once a sub-editor for The Times, spied for Britain in Sierra Leone during World War II before returning to London to work under Kim Philby on counterespionage operations in Iberia.
‘‘The idea that he was gathering useful information in Spain is not totally inconceivable,’’ Charles Cumming, the spy novelist, said. ‘‘Conspiracy theory has it that he was reporting to SIS [the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6] throughout his career and that his left-wing views were a pose to allow him access to communist and left-wing leaders.’’ If Greene did spy in Spain it would have been all the more impressive as he often drank prodigious amounts of wine and whisky, sometimes leading to boozy theological spats with Duran.
They were always driven by a volunteer chauffeur whom they jokingly referred to as the ‘‘Third Man’’ and who helped with Greene’s undisputed mission, to find the best jar of local wine.
The ambiguity of Greene’s life and political views has outlived him. At his funeral in 1991 Duran told mourners he was ‘‘with God, or on his way there’’.