Algeciras, the Patriotic Union
Operation Algeciras was a secret plan by the Argentine Navy during the Malvinas/Falklands War to attack British ships at the Gibraltar base using underwater mines placed by divers. The operation was conceived by Admiral Jorge Isaac Anaya and was even kept hidden from much of the military government itself.
What is striking about this episode is that the operational side was entrusted to members of Montoneros. The main figure was Máximo Alfredo Nicoletti, accompanied by other militants: Antonio Nelson Latorre ("el Pelado Diego") and Abel Adolfo Ojeda ("el Marciano"). All of them had experience in sabotage and clandestine operations.
The involvement of these guerrillas can be explained by their specialised knowledge of explosives and tactical diving.
This situation represents one of the most striking paradoxes of the period: men who only a few years earlier had fought against the Navy ended up collaborating with it in an operation against the United Kingdom during the war.
The operation was never carried out. In late May 1982, the Spanish police detected suspicious movements by members of the group in Málaga and Algeciras. They were arrested before they could place the mines and were subsequently discreetly expelled from Spain in order to avoid a diplomatic conflict.
An interesting detail is that several researchers maintain that British services had intercepted Argentine communications and had partial knowledge of the plan, although the exact role of British intelligence in the failure of the operation remains disputed. Still, as masters of intelligence, they were most likely aware of it.
The story of Máximo Alfredo Nicoletti is one of the most astonishing of the 1970s. He took part in sabotage operations against the Navy. The best known was the 1975 attack on the destroyer ARA Santísima Trinidad, when he placed explosives below the waterline while the ship was moored. The vessel suffered significant damage and had to remain under repair for a long time.
After the 1976 coup, Nicoletti’s situation changed radically. He was arrested and, according to various investigations, ended up collaborating with sectors of Naval Intelligence. The exact details of how that collaboration came about remain a subject of debate among historians and journalists, because there are contradictory versions and incomplete documentation.
The paradox is extraordinary: the same man who years earlier had planted bombs against Navy ships was now planning to attack a British target on behalf of that very same Navy.
Nicoletti and his group travelled to Spain posing as tourists. From hotels on the Costa del Sol, they monitored the movements of British ships entering and leaving Gibraltar. The plan was to attach limpet mines to the hull of a British warship or logistics support vessel and detonate the charges once the ship was under way. However, the Spanish police began to suspect them. The arrests took place before they could carry out the attack. Spain, which was going through a delicate democratic transition and sought to maintain good relations with both Argentina and the United Kingdom, chose to resolve the matter discreetly: the Argentines were expelled from the country and the episode remained largely secret for years.
Nicoletti also appears in several books on the Malvinas/Falklands War and special operations, including works by the journalist Juan Bautista Yofre and the British historian Nigel West. What makes his story so distinctive is that it reflects the complex and sometimes contradictory relationships that emerged during the dictatorship: former enemies ended up collaborating in a wartime operation against an external adversary.
The main driving force —and, strictly speaking, the true political mastermind of the operation— was Admiral Jorge Isaac Anaya, then Commander-in-Chief of the Navy and a member of the Military Junta. Contrary to some malicious voices claiming that the admiral was indulgent towards British policy on the Malvinas so that the United Kingdom of Great Britain could recover the naval power that Margaret Thatcher was beginning to dismantle, he wanted to strike the British Navy outside the Malvinas theatre of operations, taking the war to Europe. Anaya entrusted the operational design to Admiral Eduardo Morris Girling, head of Naval Intelligence, who selected the personnel and organised the details of the mission.
As for the name, "Operation Algeciras" was so called because the Spanish city of Algeciras, located opposite Gibraltar, was the base from which the Argentine commandos would operate. There they rented vehicles, stayed in hotels and carried out surveillance of British naval traffic. The real target was Gibraltar, but the code name adopted that of the Spanish city from which the mission would be carried out.
There is an interesting historical detail: the operation drew some inspiration from the actions of the Italian divers of the Decima Flottiglia MAS during the Second World War. Those commandos had attacked British ships precisely in Gibraltar and other Mediterranean ports using limpet mines placed by divers. Nicoletti, moreover, was the son of an Italian veteran of that type of unit, so there was a technical and even family connection with that tradition of underwater warfare.
What is extraordinary is that, had the operation succeeded, it would probably have been the only Argentine attack carried out on European soil during the South Atlantic war but, above all, it showed that when Argentines unite beyond our ideological differences in favour of "the Fatherland first", we can land a solid punch on our enemies.
