False Comrades

A historical thriller that recounts the operations, tortures and betrayals of the “Red-hunting” police infiltrated within the Spanish Communist Party (PCE)

Despite the official announcement of Franco’s victory in 1939, the war continued in Spain in different forms and with new actors. The hopes for change after World War II faded with the onset of the Cold War, a time when the dictatorship ramped up repression, especially against the maquis. In 1947, Communist leaders collaborated with the police, dismantling the party’s clandestine structure, resulting in more than 2,000 arrests and 46 death sentences. Fernando Hernández Sánchez reconstructs this unequal conflict between police and activists, leaving behind a scattered paper trail. Infiltrators and traitors, who helped crush the anti-Franco resistance, became crucial tools for the regime. This struggle reduced the resistance to prisons, exile, mountains or cemeteries.