Documentary about the British double agent “who saved the world” to open in Palma in English this week

PALMA
A new documentary about the flamboyant Spanish double agent who duped Hitler in a British secret service plot which ensured the success of the Normandy landings.

Joan Pujol García, who was awarded the MBE for his efforts, was known by the British codename Garbo and the German codename Arabel.
He had a key role in the success of Operation Fortitude, the deception operation intended to mislead the Germans about the timing and location of the invasion of Normandy towards the end of World War II.

The false information Pujol supplied helped persuade German intelligence the main attack would come in the Pas de Calais, resulting in a decision to withhold troops from the area around the Normandy beachhead. The son of an industrialist, who fought for Franco during the Spanish Civil War, Garbo had been recruited by MI5 in 1942.

He had originally been recruited by German spymaster Karl Kuehlanthal, whom he had fooled with fake reports allegedly filed from a hideout in England.
But Garbo's bulletins on British troop and shipping movements were made from his home in Portugal, and were gleaned entirely from an Ordnance survey map of Britain, a Blue Guide, a Portuguese publication called the British fleet - and a dictionary of military terms.

Later, working for MI5, he invented a network of 27 “agents” and fed his Nazi spymasters a constant stream of misinformation on British war preparations.

A drunken RAF officer in Glasgow and a Communist-hating War Office linguist were amongst the characters the Spaniard invented as sources for his information.

Garbo was hailed as the “world's greatest actor”

DIED IN MAJORCA
His audacity and creativity lead to his codename being changed from Bovril to Garbo after his British bosses said he had proved himself to be “the greatest actor in the world”.

His MI5 case officer was a Spanish-speaking intelligence officer Tomas Harris who is buried here in Majorca where he died in a car crash in 1964.
Garbo's information to the Germans included fictitious tales throughout the war, including the existence of a massive arms dump under Chislehurst in south-east London. German commanders were so convinced of the existence of the depot, linked across London by a subterranean train network, that they considered a plan to send saboteurs to blow it up. “Garbo's reports formed the backbone of all German Intelligence appreciation on which vital operational decisions were taken,” wrote Harris at the end of the war in the autumn of 1945.

And praise had also been forthcoming from his Nazi commanders - he was awarded the Iron Cross for his services to Germany, with the approval of Hitler.
For his efforts in aid of the Allies Garbo also received an MBE from the British and after the war faked his death and moved to Venezuela, where he lived in anonymity. He died in 1988.

The documentary will be screened from Friday at the Renoir.