“I lost sleep, my friends and family, and my enemies multiplied, because I had them even in my own ranks. They told me “run, Lobo, run, your life will depend on your instinct.” This is how Mikel Lejarza describes his life , alias El Lobo, who was captured by the secret service to infiltrate ETA in 1973, and has now written a book in which he recalls his 45 years as a spy. I confess. 45 years as a spy will be presented next Thursday in Bilbao by its co-author, the journalist Fernando Rueda.
The legend of Mikel Lejarza (Areatza, Vizcaya, 1951) began in 1973 when he infiltrated ETA. From inside the terrorist organization, he managed to deal the worst blow in its history: the arrest of more than 200 activists.
Doing the double game for the espionage services without arousing suspicion was not easy. In fact, on one occasion he was accused of being a spy and he had the cold blood to come out unscathed: “We know from the Catalan movement that you have heard on the BBC news that we have an infiltrated agent from the Spanish secret services. And that agent is you and they call you El Lobo,” his terrorist “comrades” told him.
“The way they told me, I just burst out laughing, I was laughing my ass off. I was carrying my two pistols, the big Browning and the smaller Firebird. I took them out and handed them over to him.”
“You shove it up your ass, you fucking shits. You’ve got me lying here for three months waiting like a fucking bastard, hidden like a dog, and now you come and accuse me of being a secret agent. If I’m an agent, now I’m leaving.” and you shoot me. I walked away. They stayed cold, “narrates” The Wolf “in the book.
After dealing the blow to ETA and his real name coming to light, the gang put a price on his head and the espionage services had to give him a new identity.
Years later, after his superiors sent him to Mexico because he did not like the GAL, in 1989 Lejarza was sent to Barcelona to help dismantle Terra Lliure.
“They arrested all the members of Terra Lliure, although some of the suspects were not involved for various reasons. According to what Chema told me and the head of the service’s operation, Oleguer Pujol, he was in the circle of that terrorist group, the youngest son of Jordi Pujol, who left for France. Oleguer’s relationship fell silent because he was the son of the president of the Catalan Generalitat,” says “El Lobo.”
Lejarza continued in Barcelona. During this time, ETA tried to kidnap his children and assassinate him with a car bomb, but just that day he opened his car and the ETA members did not recognize him.
In the last twenty years, always as a secret agent, Lejarza became more involved in cases related to the economy, international terrorism or drug trafficking and arms sales, to such an extent that he came to coincide in the Gijon cafe in Madrid with Mohamed Atta two months before the attacks on the twin towers in New York.
He had to wait until 2010 to receive any official recognition for his work as an agent of the Spanish secret service. Carme Chacon, the then Minister of Defense, signed the award of the Military Merit Cross with White Distinctive and it was imposed on her in a private act by Felix Sanz, the director of the CNI.
“Felix Sanz gave a very nice and moving talk: “This medal is a pity that it has to be given here, in a closed place; this medal had to be given publicly and this recognition had to be public. For reasons of our work we have to do it that way and we do it here with great pleasure”. For me it was a way of recognition, something that had never been done in the service, that of bringing the family and being decorated”.
