While I was at the Valencia film festival last week, I saw a great little documentary called Operación Algeciras. It's fascinating stuff, so I thought I'd post a self-edited version of my review of it. The chap in the photo above is called Máximo Nicoletti. His identity is explained below.

An obscure military operation which could, the film claims, have altered the course of the Falklands conflict (the Malvinas War in Hispanic parlance), is the focus of Jesus Mora's Operacion Algeciras, an absorbing, deftly-told tale which succeeds mostly by virtue of the wit and charm of its main narrator. Though there are moments of obvious padding in a yarn which is in reality little more than a minor footnote, the script weaves plenty of intrigue and dark humor from the material.

The early frames provide the common knowledge background to the 1982 conflict from the Argentine perspective. Then Juan Luis Gallardo, who wrote a book on the subject, reveals that at the start of the conflict a clandestine operation was set up, hatched by Argentine admiral Jorge Isaac Anaya, to blow up any British ship docked in Gibraltar. A team of four saboteurs, led by diver and explosives expert Maximo Nicoletti - a former member of los Montoneros, a Peronist left-wing guerilla group, who had ironically been arrested in Argentina for blowing up a ship in 1977 - was dispatched to Europe to Spain's southern coast to watch and wait for their opportunity to make history.

The film features testimony from commentators including the somewhat chilling Anaya and Brit historians Nigel West and Nicholas Tozer. (There is none from either British or Spanish government representatives - still not authorized to speak - which would probably have given pic an entirely darker flavor.) But the real star is the picaresque Nicoletti, who tells his exciting, and obviously well-rehearsed, tale with a born story-teller's skill. His efforts to recall the false name he used are hilarious.

Though the voiceover gives some context about the political situation in Argentina, the UK and Spain, this is basically human interest material. Parts of the story are frankly incredible, providing an insight into the tragi-comically haphazard nature of so-called political "operations". When interrogated as to why they were leaving Argentina - literally the only people to know about the operation were Anaya and the saboteurs - they claimed they were going on a photography trip, and the fact that they had no cameras with them didn't prevent their exit.

They bought a dinghy in a Spanish department store (the Corte Inglés in Málaga) for their renaissance work in Gibraltar harbor, realized that there was practically nothing preventing them from making their attack, and then sat around waiting for further orders. But the orders never came, and several months later the team was arrested by the Spanish authorities - following a tip-off from the man they had hired their cars from. On arrest, Nicoletti asked the policemen to join him for breakfast, and was accepted. Another saboteur asked the police whether they could pop into a dry cleaners on their way to the station to pick up his suit, and this was also done.

Two of the four saboteurs are now dead: the identity of the other, apart from Nicoletti, is unknown, but he is believed to be alive and working in New York.
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