Discover El Lobo, the Basque who put the terrorist group ETA in check

Many, very many Spaniards, mainly for reasons of age, do not know who Mikel Lejarza, El Lobo, is.

A Basque from head to toe with no connection to the militia, the police or the Guardia Civil, Mikel Lejarza was and still is a brave man who had the courage to infiltrate the terrorist group ETA in 1973, climb to the heights of its logistical infrastructure and deceive the fanatical leaders of the organisation and their henchmen for a long, tense and dangerous year. 

An anonymous hero of flesh and blood, a man without a known face, who risked his life day after day in a real cage of wild beasts, to fight in his own way against the scourge that ETA represented for national coexistence, freedom and the consolidation of the newborn Spanish democracy of the mid-1970s.

Born in a farmhouse in Vizcaya, the young Mikel Lejarza's professional activity was interior decoration and he made a good living. But everything changed overnight. With his ideas very clear, with four lessons in which he learned the ABC of information techniques and his high self-taught capacity, he knew how to internalise the role he had to play in order to become a supposed fanatic of Basque independence.

A person apparently like any other who, thanks to his overwhelming personality, self-confidence and high doses of cold blood, was able to win the trust of the ETA bosses to manage to dynamite a large part of their hidden structure of murderers and prevent numerous deaths of innocent people.  

Miquel Lejarza was given the alias of El Lobo by the heads of the Central Documentation Service of the Presidency of the Government (SECED), the remote predecessor of today's National Intelligence Centre (CNI). It was the name they chose because he had to work alone as a mole in the heart of ETA in order to dismantle the gang's murderous commandos.

And he succeeded. That is why, for half a century, he has been a human being condemned to death by ETA, keeping a bullet to serve his sentence. A communiqué from the terrorist organisation dated 15 December 1975 blames him for the death of three ETA members, for having facilitated the capture of five assassins and their support teams in Madrid and Barcelona and for the failure of the escape of prisoners from Segovia prison planned by the gang.

Now, 50 years after the start of the most dangerous espionage operation mounted by the Spanish secret services against the murderous gang, Mikel Lejarza himself has decided to unravel and delve into the secrets that he kept under lock and key in his mind.  

He has done so in "Secretos de Confesión", a recently published book by Roca Editorial, at the presentation of which he himself was present under strict security measures, with his face a little less than uncovered, wearing a false beard, wig and dark glasses, answering all the questions he was asked about his past and present, such as the fact that he is now a director of Wolf Group, a cybersecurity company.

"Secrets of Confession" grabs you from the very first lines. It is the second volume - the first was the bestseller "Yo confieso", Roca Editorial, 2019 - co-authored by Mikel and Fernando Rueda, Spain's leading journalist specialising in espionage and intelligence services.

It is another mano a mano in which, for the first time, Fernando Rueda has managed to gather the memories, testimonies and assessments of the former bosses, ex-agents of the Spanish intelligence and information services, collaborators, direct family members and closest friends of El Lobo. 

All of them, each in their own way, offer a personal or intimate vision of the spy who emerged spontaneously from the bowels of Vizcaya. They tell in first person the experiences and risky situations they shared during the time they battled against the scourge of the murderous gang.

This is the case of Fernando San Agustín, a military officer in the secret services, who stresses that El Lobo "was the perfect mole and there has never been another one like him". A character "worthy of study", because people who have infiltrated a terrorist organisation "have lasted one or two months and not the years he endured".  

During his time as an infiltrator in ETA, Mikel Lejarza has been what is known in international intelligence services as a "black agent". A full-time collaborator, but outside the staff, excluded from the payroll and without an official document that would allow him to identify himself as a member of a secret service.

On the family level, "I confess" tells how Mikel's sisters were horrified to discover that one day in 1975, when they went out into the street, they were horrified to see their brother's face on numerous posters stuck on the walls of the streets with the laconic text "Wanted". They were unaware of the very risky work their brother was doing. 

A devout believer, he assures us that "I have always felt protected". One of the people with whom he maintains a friendly relationship, the auxiliary bishop of Valencia, Arturo Ros, stresses that Mikel "has a deep spirituality, which has kept him alive and which at this stage of his life comes to the surface with spontaneity".

In Fernando Rueda's long talks with Mikel Lejarza to bring out what is now "Secretos de Confesión", taking stock of the successes he has achieved, the mistakes he has made, the satisfactions he has received and the heartaches he has suffered, he tells the journalist: "If you ask me if I have regretted it, I will tell you that I haven't".