Clueless Spanish agent known as Britain’s ‘pet spy’ after World War II blunders

By Jacqueline Fanchini

THE only thing he had in common with James Bond, was his reputation as a ‘playboy’.

Spanish spy Miguel Piernavieja del Pozo was so bad in his role that British intelligence rumbled him in weeks.

Pozo – who arrived in Britain during WWII in 1940, posing as a journalist – had in fact been sent as a Nazi intelligence officer.

Essentially tasked on spying on political figures in London, his allegiance was so obvious the British used him to feed misinformation to the Germans.

Now dubbed the ‘pet spy’, MI5 described him as a ‘dissolute and irresponsible young man of the playboy-type who had little or no knowledge of journalism, or, as clearly, of espionage’.

Pozo – whose files have finally been released from the UK National Archives – was described as being a bad writer and gave the game away when he publicly declared in the Daily Express that he believed in a German victory.

Shortly afterwards he contacted a ‘fanatical Welsh nationalist’ who, in reality, was an MI5 double agent.

The surveillance files reveal that the majority of his ‘spying’ took place at the Cafe de Paris nightclub in London, where he had relationships with many of its dancers.

He garnered a reputation for being drunk and was so ineffective he was eventually recalled to Madrid in 1941 in disgrace.