Spanish cinema is still coming to terms with the Franco era, with dramas about the Civil War and its consequences and, more recently, films about the final years of Franco’s regime. 

The recent Salvador is a story of young rebels, terrorist action in the early 1970s and Salvador Puig as the last person to be executed in 1974.  The action in El Lobo takes place at the same time.  However, the focus is on ETA and the Spanish government’s campaign against the ETA cells in the year’s before Franco’s death.

It is based on actual events.

The Lobo, the Wolf, of the title is a young construction worker from the Basque territories who had friends in ETA but was dismayed when they executed a taxi-driver acquaintance for alleged supplying of information to the Spanish authorities.  When he is taken in by the police, the authorities offer him a chance to follow his principles and gain some finance for his straitened family by becoming an informer, then persuading him to infiltrate ETA at its highest level.  This he did, keeping his cover through great personal difficulties, and handing over 150 members of ETA to the authorities.  Of course, he is eventually discarded and abandoned by the authorities.  A post-script tells us that thirty years later, he is still on an ETA hit list.

The film moves well and keeps audiences involved.  And Eduardo Noriega is an impressive and engaging screen presence as The Wolf.  In fact, the whole cast, both ETA and the Spanish police and secret service, are all convincing.  While it is really an espionage drama, it has an almost documentary-like feel about it.

What we are to think and feel is quite ambiguous.  It would be interesting to hear how Spanish audiences found it (it was nominated for a number of awards).  It would be even more interesting to hear how patriotic Basques found it.  The Wolf claims he is a man of principle against the violence perpetrated by ETA, but he is a double agent.  The Spanish authorities are ultimately devious and brutal.  The ETA terrorists are extremists and unscrupulously violent.

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