Enrique Líster

File:Enrique Lister at the Ebro, 1938.jpg

General Enrique Líster at the Battle of the Ebro, 1938.

Enrique Líster Forján (April 21 1907, Ameneiro, A Coruña—December 8 1995, Madrid) was a Spanish communist politician and army official.

A stonemason, he lived his adolescence in Cuba, before returning in 1925 and joining the Communist Party of Spain (PCE). His involvement with the revolutionary movement forced his exile until 1931, when the Second Spanish Republic was proclaimed. Between 1932 and 1935 Líster received training in the Frunze Military Academy, one of the most respected in the former Soviet Union, and as the Spanish Civil War started, he joined the Republican Army.

As a high-rank Republican Army official, Líster was instrumental in the defense of Madrid and other important military actions. As a divisional commander, he helped demolish the Italian offensive at the Battle of Guadalajara. The Republicans made poor use of his expertise in their Ebro offensive of 1938, but he is widely regarded as a war hero for the Republican cause.

After the end of the Civil War, Líster took refuge in Moscow, later fighting in World War II as a Red Army general. According to Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky, in late 1959 Fidel Castro's intelligence chief Ramiro Valdés contacted the KGB in Mexico City, the Soviets sent over one hundred mostly Spanish-speaking advisors, including Enrique Líster Forján, to organize the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution in Cuba.

In 1973 he split from the PCE and founded the Spanish Communist Workers' Party (PCOE). A catalyst for the split was the condemnation by the PCE of the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia in 1968. Líster returned to Spain in 1977, after Francisco Franco's death, and rejoined the PCE during the Spanish transition to democracy. He died in 1994. Líster wrote two books about his personal experiences in the Spanish Civil War, Nuestra guerra (1966) and Memorias de un luchador (1977).

References

• Lister's stay in Cuba is mentioned in: Gordievsky, Oleg; Andrew, Christopher (1990). KGB: The Inside Story. Hodder & Stoughton. ISBN 0-340-48561-2.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)