Spain may yet recognise one of its heroes, a doctor who saved thousands of European Jews who were attempting to flee from the Nazis by crossing treacherous mountain passes in the Pyrenees.
Dr Eduardo Martínez Alonso also rescued Britons who were held prisoner in Spain.
As the physician for the British Embassy in Madrid, he used his position as his cover and was able to send refugees to the safety of Gibraltar and Portugal.
He devised a route into Portugal from a concentration camp for prisoners which General Franco had set up near Burgos in the north of Spain. He was allowed in to attend to sick British inmates. While there, he falsified papers to get hundreds released.
Dr Martínez sheltered people often in his family home in Galicia and in an apartment in Madrid while safe passage out of Spain was being arranged.
Born in Galicia, his younger life was spent in Britain where his Uruguayan father spent many years as a diplomat. He was brought up in Glasgow and studied medicine at the University of Liverpool.
When WWII started, he was practicing medicine in Madrid.
Now the city may choose to name a street after him. Madrid council is considering a number of names to honour this year.
Few people in his lifetime knew of his efforts. Even his daughter, Patricia Martínez de Vicente, said that her father had never talked about his wartime espionage work.
Dr Martínez, she said, had signed Britain's Official Secrets Act in 1943 and kept silent about his role in saving thousands from the Nazis.
It was only when official documents were declassified in 2005 that she discovered his heroic achievements.
Comments
Without our input to his younger life would he have been helping our chaps or the Jews out via Gibraltar? Who else in Spain was at this time?