Following Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of North Africa, on 8 November 1942, the Free French authorities based in Algeria created the Corps Francs d'Afrique.

This was a regular division intended for volunteer civilian combatants, which attracted many Spaniards, including Captain Miguel Buiza, the former head of the Spanish Republican Navy.

The Spanish soldiers entered combat against the remains of the Afrika Corps, made up of German and Italian troops, in December 1942 in Tunisia.

[10] La Nueve was placed under command of a Frenchman, Captain Raymond Dronne, with the Spaniard Amado Granell serving as his lieutenant.

[11] The majority were socialists, communists, anarchists or unaffiliated men hostile to Franco, while others were deserters of concentration camps for Spanish refugees in Algeria and Morocco.

The 2nd combat section gave their half-tracks the names "Résistance", "Teruel", "España Cañi" (later "Libération"), "Nous Voilà" (French for "Here we are") and "Ebro".

La Nueve engaged in combat against German units on the outskirts of Château-Gontier and Alençon, and from 13 to 18 August, fought in the vanguard of the division at Écouché.

[21] At 9:22 pm,[22] the section led by Amado Granell was the first to reach the Hôtel de Ville,[23] and the half-track "Ebro" fired the first shots against a group of German machine guns.

In the afternoon of 25 August, at 3:30 pm, the German garrison surrendered, and General von Choltitz was held prisoner by Spanish soldiers until being handed over to a French officer.

The company's merit did not go unnoticed, with General De Gaulle personally awarding medals to the soldiers in the city of Nancy on 26 September.

Captain Raymond Dronne, Canarian sub-lieutenant Miguel Campos, Catalan sergeant Fermín Pujol and the Galician corporal Cariño López all received the Médaille militaire and Croix de guerre 1939–1945.

Some of them are experiencing a clear moral crisis due to the losses we've suffered and above all to the events in Spain.The 2nd Armored Division was relieved of active duty at the end of February for fifty days of rest, in the Châteauroux region.

At the end of the war, a few followed Leclerc to Indochina, several left with armoured vehicles in the direction of Francoist Spain, while others returned to civilian life.

[36] In 2014, the association 24 Août 1944 ("24 August 1944") organized a series of marches following the route of La Nueve through Paris in commemoration of the 70th anniversary of its liberation.

[41] The last surviving member of La Nueve, Rafael Gómez Nieto, died in Strasbourg on March 31, 2020, at the age of 99, a victim of the COVID-19 pandemic.