Spain's 'Mata Hari' spied on Freemasons for Franco

[Anonymous]

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/ ... 48440.html

Spain had a Mata Hari, who spied on the Freemasons and fed covert reports to the dictator Francisco Franco about the secretive order.

Known only as "Anita de S", she revealed to El Generalissimo plots against his regime in the 1940s, a book, Franco Contra Los Masones (Franco Against the Masons), claims.

General Franco had a hatred for the Freemasons that bordered on the obsessive. He saw them as a threat to his power in the aftermath of the Civil War and blamed them for the loss of the colonies in Africa as well as the rise of secularism.In 1940 he outlawed the organisation, making membership a crime punishable by up to six years in jail.

The enigmatic femme fatale "Anita" was based in Portugal, base for the exiled Spanish Masons. According to the authors, Xavi Casinos and Josep Brunet, she was well-placed to know every move the secretive organisation was making: she was married to a leading Mason.

The authors unearthed letters that "Anita" wrote to Franco about the Masons' activities. "Though in other countries the Masons may have been linked to political power, in Spain in the 1940s their power was minimal," said Casinos. "But thanks to the reports of 'Anita', if the Masons would support any group which was trying to end Franco's rule, he would know about it before anyone else and would be able to stop it happening." It is thought Franco loathed the Masons because they refused him membership.

The book also claims Franco invented a journalist, Jakim Boor, who interviewed the dictator in the newspaper Arriba, often attacking the Masons. Boor was Franco.

The original Mata Hari was an exotic dancer who spied for the Germans in the First World War and executed for treason in 1917.