Enrique Líster

File:Enrique Lister at the Ebro, 1938.jpg

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

Enrique Líster (1907, Ameneiro (A Coruña) - 1994, Madrid) was a Spanish communist politician and army official.

In 1925 he joined the Communist Party of Spain (PCE). His involvement with the revolutionary movement forced his exile until 1931, when the Second Spanish Republic began. Between 1932 and 1935 Líster received training in the Frunze Military Academy, one of the most respected in the former USSR, 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, including the battle of the Ebro in 1938. 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 Soviet Army general. 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.

According to Andrew and Gordievsky (1990 approximately in late 1959 Castro's intelligence chief Ramiro Valdés contacted the KGB in Mexico City, the USSR sent over one hundred mostly Spanish speaking advisors; including Enrique Lister Farjan to organize the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution.

Líster returned to Spain in 1977, after General 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).

Lister's stay in Cuba is mentioned in: Andrew, Christopher and Oleg Gordievsky 1990 KGB: The Inside Story of Its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev. Harpercollins, New York ISBN 0060166053