Lobo, El (2004) - Synopsis

Based on a true story. In the 70's, during the last stages of Franco's dictatorship, LOBO is about an infiltrator in the ETA terrorist group whose mission, in the early 1970’s, brought down a fourth of its members.

LOBO is inspired by the life of Mikel Lejarza, AKA “Lobo” (Wolf), the Spanish secret agent who infiltrated ETA between 1973 and 1975. Lobo contributed to the fall of one quarter of the terrorist activists of the organisation, – including several Special Forces members and some top-level figures of the group. Lejarza’s infiltration destabilised the terrorist organization at a time when its actions where becoming a perfect justification for the most conservative arm of the Franco regime to take full powers and stop the democratic process in Spain. The Lobo operation stopped terrorists’ plans to escape from the prison they where held at and a campaign of blind attacks. These demonstrations of power to a dying dictatorship intended to provoke the army to ensure the action – repression – action spiral.

LOBO is the story of a man used and destroyed by the Spanish dictatorship secret services – who tried to get rid of him during the process. The Lobo operation was the most successful operation ever led by the Spanish police against ETA.
As a consequence, ETA sentenced Lejarza to death and covered the whole Basque country with search posters of the traitor. Lobo had to change his name and face and disappear without a trace. The memory of Lobo is so present to the ETA that its commando members always carry around a bullet bearing his name.