The Peguerillas powder depot and the cemetery where 'the man who never existed' rests

@ElentirENG ES 5·24·2023 · 23:28 0

Although Spain did not participate in World War II, an important operation of that war took place on its coasts.

The wreck of an Avro Lancaster bomber shot down in 1944 in a field in Germany
Pine Grove: the ruins of a former secret WWII prisoner of war camp in the US

Operation Mincemeat (Minced Meat) was organized in 1943 by the Allies to make the Germans believe that they were going to land in Greece instead of Sicily. To do this, they used the corpse of a Welsh beggar who had recently died of pneumonia, named Glyndwr Michael, and characterized him as if he were a commander of the British Royal Marines named William Martin, carrying a letter that made mention of that invasion plan. The body was left in the water by a British submarine and was discovered on a beach in Punta Umbría, in Spain, by a fisherman.

The reason why it was decided to carry out this operation in Spain is because the allies knew that the German intelligence service, the Abwehr, had a presence in this country. The information about the letter found on the corpse ended reaching the Germans, who finally took the bait, dividing their forces and thus contributing to the success of the Allied landing in Sicily.

Glyndwr Michael was buried under his assumed name of William Martin in Huelva's La Soledad Cemetery, a Catholic cemetery, rather than the Anglican cemetery next door, because the Spanish, for a medal that the British put up with the body, they thought the castaway was a Catholic (it was part of the deception so that the Spanish would bury the body faster and not do a very exhaustive autopsy, which would have led them to suspect a hoax). Today his real name is also on the tombstone. In 1956, a British film entitled "The Man Who Never Was" was released, based on Operation Mincemeat.

Yesterday, the always interesting channel Aventuras Entresierras (I recommend you subscribe) released an interesting video in which he explores the old powder magazines of Peguerillas and also visits the aforementioned cemetery and the English cemetery located next door, the latter in a sad state of neglect (the video is in Spanish, you can activate the automatic subtitles in English in the bottom bar of the player):

You can see here some captures of the video. We begin with an image of theamphibious operation that the protagonists of the video had to carry out to reach the powder magazines, since they are located on a small island that is accessed by a stream with a dangerous background of mud.

A sad image of the English cemetery , now abandoned.

The grave of Glyndwr Michael, with a wreath of poppies placed by the British Embassy in Madrid on Remembrance Day (11 November), when Commonwealth countries pay tribute to their fallen .

The joint grave of two Allied WWII airmen, one Australian (the one on the left) and the other British.