Los espías no hablan

Karel Holemans was a Flemish painter who dreamed of the independence of Flanders. He spied on Spain during the Civil War, on the Republican side. In the Nazi invasion of Belgium he worked as a double spy. Or maybe triple. He was a German intelligence agent, was married to a Resistance agent and was secretly a Knight Commander of the Templars. He enlisted in the German secret services in order to get the historical archives of the Order of the Temple out of Belgium and prevent them from falling into the hands of the Gestapo. He took the archives to Portugal and thereby saved the lives of 238 Belgian and French Templars. As a painter he knew success and poverty, and his works hang today in various European museums, including the Reina Sofía in Madrid. He was sentenced to death in Belgium and went into exile in Spain, where he spent the rest of his life. He married the pubilla from a rich family of cavistas from Sant Sadurní d'Anoia. Her mother-in-law never approved of the wedding and she went after him with a false accusation of bigamy that almost cost him extradition and her life. In 1974, he was present as a translator at the execution of Heinz Chez in Tarragona, sentenced by Franco to die by garrote on the same day and at the same time as Puig Antich in Barcelona. His son Carlos has spent more than ten years digging up and putting together what he never told.