Luis Bolín

Luis Antonio Bolín Bidwell (1897 Málaga; 3 September 1969) was a Spanish lawyer, journalist and trade unionist, Head of the National Union of Catering and Allied Attorney in Parliament during the first four legislatures of Francoist Spain.

Bolín was born into a well-to-do family of Swedish descent in Málaga, Spain in 1897. He studied at the universities of Granada and Madrid, and later in London.

During World War I he worked in France as a journalist. In 1920, during the period of the Second Spanish Republic he was press attaché at the Spanish Embassy in London. He also became a correspondent for the conservative and pro-monarchy Spanish newspaper ABC and in 1921 he became a member of the information section of the League of Nations.

In February 1936, Bolín played an important role in the events leading up to the Spanish Civil War, when he organised the flight of a de Havilland Dragon Rapide aircraft from Croyden to the Canary Islands, in order to transport General Franco from the Canaries to Tetuan in Spanish Morocco. The flight itself was planned over lunch at Simpson's-in-the-Strand, where Bolín met with Douglas Francis Jerrold, the conservative Roman Catholic editor of The English Review, and Major Hugh Pollard. Pollard contracted Captain Cecil Bebb as pilot, also taking his daughter Diana Pollard and one of her friends, to pose as tourists. The flight was successful.

In return for his assistance, Bolín was appointed by Franco honorary Captain of the Spanish Foreign Legion. He also became General Franco's chief press officer, and during the Civil War he was responsible for taking journalists on tours of the various battlefields.

In 1967 he published his memoirs, Spain, the Vital Years. He died in 1969.