The documents declassified in Washington warned of the role of the Soviets in Africa and, in particular, of their interests in destabilizing the Canary Islands. in a geopolitical context marked by the decolonization process of the Sahara, the presence of the MPAIAC independence movement and the incorporation of Spain into NATO.
The Soviet authorities always denied that their ships had transported weapons intended for Spanish terrorist organizations, alluding to Antonio Cubillo’s MPAIAC. The truth is that Krassilnikov was accused, although without official confirmation, of maintaining contacts with leaders of the pro-independence organization. And Vladimir Yefremenkov, second secretary of the embassy in Madrid, was expelled for trying to obtain information from the Canarian terrorist group.
From the beginning of the Transition there was a movement by the OAU aimed at starting a process of supposed decolonization of the Canary Islands, contested by the successive Spanish governments. Faced with the possibility of a declaration of the Africanness of the Canary Islands, which Colonel Gadaffi wanted to introduce at the OAU summit in Tripoli in 1978, the CESID prepared a document alerting the government. President Suárez protested the presence of Antonio Cubillo at the reception offered by the Soviet embassy in Algiers.
Nevertheless, and in its role as a world superpower, Russia made itself felt in strategic matters. With regard to the possible entry of Spain into NATO, a KGB chief, Annatoly Vinogradov, even wrote a song for the Las Palmas Carnival, entitled: “We don’t want NATO, we want Sovhispan.” The Atlantic Alliance, in a document of the time, expressed its mistrust of the Soviet presence in the Canary Islands, perceiving the proliferation of Soviet ships as a threat, supposedly both scientific research and oceanographic or meteorological research, “but with clear espionage functions “, they were saying.
