The Kaiser, the Nazis, the foreigners and other theories why a beautiful cove in Cádiz is called 'Playa de los Alemanes'

The Cadiz coastline is one of the most international that surrounds the Iberian Peninsula. The Beni de Cádiz repeated it like this: "To the south it borders with Morocco, to the north with Spain, to the west with the USA [Rota base] and to the east with England [Gibraltar]". Among its treasures is the one known as Playa de los Alemanes and it is located between Cabo de Plata or Gracia and Playa de Agua in the middle.

Gustav Draëger, the Nazi spy who blew up the Third Reich from Seville

Next to Zahara de los Atunes, the cove is in the municipality of Tarifa. It is a magnificent cove about 1,500 meters long and 50 meters wide. Nobody sponsors the name of "the Germans" but the locals insist that it was not put by chance. Not surprisingly, it is known that many Germans spent time in the area since before the 1940s. But legends and a good handful of realities circulate around this piece of coastline that justify its name.

Why "the Germans"? The history goes back to the beginning of the 20th century where the rumor circulates that there is "a German every 30 km on the Spanish coast" due to the interest that Kaiser Guillermo II had in the control of the Strait. History confirms that the Kaiser was deployed in Tangier in 1905 with colonial appetites, although it is unknown if any of his spies were located on that beach.

What is certain is that this beach, even before the Second World War, housed German residents in its surroundings, which could be the origin of the nomenclature. As it is also true that during the Second World War it served as a surveillance and supply point for Nazi ships and submarines that circulated through the Gibraltar Strait. His plots, in Zahara, emerge in the novel 'To forget who you were' (Ateneo de Sevilla Award, Algaida 2019) by Fernando García Calderón, based on historical reviews.

This is confirmed by Margarita Neuer, daughter of the Consul and spy Gustav Draëger, who told José María Irujo (El País) what Fernando Soto categorically affirms: his father traveled regularly –during the Second World War– to the Playa de los Alemanes to supply food to Nazi submarines that splashed down there. In fact, the historian Alfonso Escuadra, one of the experts who has most investigated the Nazi footprint in Cádiz, in the work 'In the Shadow of the Rock' (Cajastur, 1997), documented incursions and shipwrecks carried out by units of the army of the Third Reich, between the period of June 18, 1941 to February 22, 1944 on the Andalusian coast. Two of them are located on the beach of the Germans.

Even Claudio Bonifacio, an Italian shipwreck expert based in Seville, located the coordinates (N 36° 04' 265" W 5° 47' 453") of a German submarine sunk near such a beach. To this evidence is added the theory that places in the submersible a load of gold bars and jewels stolen from the Jews by the Nazis. The cause of the shipwreck would be accidental or because the crew sank it. The wreck has never been raised. Just when he was processing Bonifacio and Luis Ángel Valero de Bernabé's finder's rights before the Junta de Andalucía, they were implicated in the Bahía 2 summary. The ruling in the case, 12 years later, imposed a symbolic fine on them. In his work 'Galeons and submerged treasures' (Editorial Lulú, 2010) it is clear where the submersible is: near the beach of the Germans.

It has also been attested that the submarines U-208, U-451, U-732, U-340, U-761, U-392 and U-731 during World War II were sunk between early 1942 and late 1944. trying to cross the Strait of Gibraltar from the Atlantic. It is recorded by U-History, spokesman for the Ubootwaffe (fleet of German submarines in the Nazi era) and many of them rest in the Cadiz funds near the Playa de los Alemanes. And it is tangible that, in the mid-40s, a bunker was built that delimits the beach of the Germans and that of Atlanterra. Franco's phobia of being invaded actually seeded the Cadiz coast with those defensive forts.

Credit Counseling FAQ: How to Choose a Credit Counseling Agency http://goo.gl/fb/sA3KD

— CreditLoan.com Tue Oct 19 16:44:07 +0000 2010

After the war

The investigation of what happened after the end of the war with the Nazis who escaped leads to many cases in Andalusia, of course, also on the coast. In the case of Cádiz, the documentary 'Playa de los Alemanes', made in 2019 by Daniel Marí and Johannes Hofman, searches – with determination and little results – for traces and testimonies about Nazis who took refuge there after the war. It is not clear if they used such a remote place for ODESSA, the network that was orchestrated after the conflict by Nazi leaders to get them out alive and shelter them in other parts of the globe. The hypothesis says that the Nazis were introduced along the route from Valencia-Madrid/Seville/Algeciras-Tangier/ to later ship them to South America. And in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay they essentially got rid of their identity and erased their past. Another novel, which repeats the title 'Playa de los Alemanes' (Jirones de Azul, 2010) is signed by Javier Compás. This historian insists that "German refugees lived in that beautiful cove after the end of the Second World War."

In any case, the area's relationship with Germany does not end there. According to the journalist, writer and contributor to elDiario.es Juan José Téllez, decades ago, Spanish military espionage investigated a kind of logistics platform near this beach to supply ships from the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). The presence of agents from that Warsaw Pact country alerted Spanish counterintelligence. But nobody knows what our military spies concluded.

The harshest reality is that Playa de los Alemanes was difficult to access from the closest towns until the 1950s. Although then German houses are already dated that used horses to enter and leave their homes. Near the beach there were huts; from the sea it was easier to reach this short beach strip.

Specifically, on the slope leading up from the beach, only three German families lived permanently there. According to the documentary by Marí and Hofman, they were wealthy Nazis who had little to do with the locals. His descendants, already in the fifties and sixties, returned to Germany.

"To the east and west"

This could be considered the moment of the beginning of German tourism in the area. But it was not until the beginning of the sixties when tourism in Zahara was activated. And it was done in a somewhat curious way, as Zahara's own tourism website narrates. They say that a group of German businessmen showed up at the office of Álvaro Domecq, then President of the Cádiz Provincial Council. They told him very politely about his investment purposes. Don Álvaro was perplexed by the proposal. It was a millionaire what was projected to invest in such an inhospitable place. The strangeness of the President of the Provincial Council was not concealed, as the area was hit by winds from the east and west. A question arose from the man, faced with such an insane proposal: "Have you taken the winds into account?" The Germans responded in unison and smiling: 'To the east and west it is very healthy'.

From that first interest we went on to an emblematic building that increased the German presence on the beach to which that name gives its name. In 1970 work began on the Atlanterra and Zahara Hotels (demolished in 2002) directed by the Architect Alvis Franz Rotter. The Francoist minister Sánchez Bella endorsed the project and supervised it in 1973, after arriving at the emporium by helicopter.

Bankruptcies, delays and unpaid postponed hotel projects. Only the Atlanterra was inaugurated in 1983. It was key to gather numerous urbanizations around it. The tenacity of the new architect Horts Mankel achieved the postponed hotel opening together with the entrepreneur Kurt Schlichtkrull, nicknamed 'Juanaco' by the locals. Both the hotel and the surrounding developments are known by the locals as "the Germans" because of the builders and the first owners who settled there. To add to the mystery, there are unconfirmed rumors and stories circulating in the area about dinners at the hotel involving discreet old Nazis, albeit unconfirmed. Be that as it may, in 1987 the Hotel Atlanterra, owned by German businessmen, changed owners and managers. The sale was discreet. Since the end of the 1980s, the establishment has been operated by the multinational Meliá.

What is clear is that there are plenty of reasons, legends, facts and stories for Playa de los Alemanes to bear the name by which everyone knows it.