El Lobo

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El Lobo
Directed by	Miguel Courtois
Starring	Eduardo Noriega José Coronado Mélanie Doutey
Running time	134 mins
Country	Spain
Language	Spanish
IMDb profile

El Lobo (The Wolf in English) is a film directed by Miguel Courtois. It stars Eduardo Noriega.

[edit] Plot

Lobo is based on the life of Mikel Lejarza, an agent of the Spanish intelligence service in the 1970s. During the last stages of Franco's dictatorship between 1973 and 1975. Lejarza infiltrated ETA, a paramilitary group seeking independence for the Basque Country, and was responsible for the fall of one quarter of the terrorist activists of the organisation - including Special Forces members and some top-level figures of the group.

Lobo's operation destabilized the terrorist organization at a time when its actions where becoming a perfect validation for the most conservative arm of the Franco regime to take full powers and stop all democratic process in Spain.

The Lobo operation hindered the terrorists’ plans to escape from the prison they where held at and a campaign of blind attacks across the country.
Lobo was a man betrayed and ruined by the Spanish dictatorship secret services, who although at first hiring him to help them stop the ETA tried to get rid of him later on when he became less useful to them. Although this did not stop Lobo and he kept on in with mission and it led to the most successful mission ever held against ETA by the Spanish Government.

Because of his betrayal, the ETA sentenced Lobo to death and covered the whole Basque country with search posters of the traitor, hoping that their supporters would aid in the capture and destruction of the wolf. As a result Mikel had to change his name and face and disappear without a trace. The memory of Lobo is so vivid to the ETA that its members always carry around a bullet bearing his name to kill the traitor if they ever meet or see him.