Ignacio's great-great-grandfather, Francisco Hidalgo de Cisneros y Seija (1730–1794), as a younger son did not inherit the family wealth; he left his native Gipuzkoa and rising to teniente general settled in Cartagena.

[3] His son and Ignacio's grandfather, Francisco Hidalgo de Cisneros y Gaztambide (1803–1864), became also a military who sided with the legitimists during the First Carlist War;[4] he returned from Murcia to the North, settling in Álava.

[17] Unaccustomed to discipline and enjoying life rather than pursuing his curriculum, as emergency measure the young Ignacio was transferred to Toledo, to the school managed by the Carlist friend of his late father, Cesáreo Sanz Escartín;[18] unsuccessful also there, at unspecified date he finally completed the Madrid Academia de Révora.

[24] Once the Spanish army commenced formal aviation training he was transferred to the Cuatro Vientos air base,[25] where in 1919-1920 Hidalgo de Cisneros completed flying courses and joined the nascent Aviación Militar Española.

[37] Hardly concerned with politics and having long abandoned not only his juvenile Carlism but also his faith, as a young officer Hidalgo de Cisneros considered himself a patriotic Spaniard[38] serving the cause of the king and the country; during service in Andalusia he was enraged by British presence in Gibraltar, claiming he would die of hunger rather than allow the English to stay on the Spanish soil.

[39] During the First World War he sympathised with Central Powers rather than with Entente,[40] following the Annual disaster he was anxious to defend the glory of Spain and administer exemplary punishment to rebellious Berber tribes.

Though far from militancy, he was irritated by adulation of Primo, incompetence and corporatism of the military, omnipresence of the Church, señoritismo culture among the upper strata and, last but not least, by social abyss diving the poor and the rich, especially in the South of Spain.

[44] Having befriended a number of opposition-minded individuals, especially other aviators Ramón Franco, Jose Legorburu and Miguel Nuñez de Prado,[45] he developed indifference towards the monarchy in general and towards Alfonso XIII in particular, as he met and was unimpressed by the king.

[47] Once on leave in Madrid Hidalgo de Cisneros was somewhat accidentally involved in the Republican conspiracy; his personal rather than political public outburst against a monarchically-minded opponent triggered invitation to join the plot.

[48] Unaware of rather ruritanian nature of the scheme, sketchy, chaotic and supported by few vacillating officers and politicians, Hidalgo de Cisneros with his decisiveness emerged, to his own surprise and unease, as one of the leaders of the coup.

He flew from the South to Madrid and following consultations with Miguel Maura, Ramón Franco and Queipo de Llano,[49] on 15 December 1930 he and few other conspirators took control of the Cuatro Vientos air base.

[50] Having moved to France, in Paris Hidalgo de Cisneros met a number of emigrant Spanish politicians, especially Marcelino Domingo, Diego Martínez Barrio and Indalecio Prieto;[51] with the latter he forged a closer, friendly relationship.

[54] As Spanish politics was getting increasingly and rapidly charged with sectarian militancy, Hidalgo de Cisneros with little hesitation blamed the Church, monarchists, landowners, aristocracy and reactionary forces for the erupting violence;[55] this stance earned him hostile attitude of most of his family.

[58] Already before commencing his diplomatic mission Hidalgo de Cisneros co-drafted plans to purge the aviation corps of officers considered monarchist or reactionary; he was disappointed to see that the Republican minister did not act on his advice.

[64] In the summer of 1935 at his own request Hidalgo was recalled from Rome[65] and assigned to cartographic section of General Staff,[66] where he used to show up every day with a fresh issue of El socialista ostentatiously on display.

[76] During his first months in command Hidalgo de Cisneros shuttled the squadrons between airports concentrating aircraft on key Nationalist advance routes, tried to co-ordinate logistics and to make up for the loss of pilots, most of whom opted for the rebels;[77] despite having been head of military aviation, he also flew combat sorties himself.

[79] Increasingly perplexed by lack of discipline and chaos among the Republicans, he blamed the anarchists for disorganizing the military effort and the socialists, unwilling to confront FAI and CNT, for appeasement and indecision.

[84] The Republican aviation, "La Gloriosa", was in fact managed by the Russian air attaché Smushkevich, who appreciated Hidalgo for dedication and loyalty, but thought him incompetent for the job.

[101] His exact role and whereabouts are not clear; according to an oral testimony he was briefly engaged in the aviation industry;[102] allegedly offered a rank of general in the Red Army he declined.

Taking advantage of the PCE network in France[116] he arranged residence behind the Iron Curtain; as at that time Poland was admitting a limited number of Spanish communist exiles,[117] in 1949 or 1950 he settled in Warsaw.

On request of Santiago Álvarez, who at that time acted as PCE liaison with Eastern European communist regimes, Hidalgo de Cisneros was readmitted to Warsaw, where he was granted the retiree status with 3,000 zloty pension.

Despite 12 years of residence he did not feel well in Poland,[132] depressed by early dusk, cold and rainy climate, melancholic flat countryside and potato-based cuisine; writing to Galan from the Polish mountain resort of Zakopane he complained about having no assistance when working on politically sensitive second part of his memoirs.

Hidalgo de Cisneros was buried on the Bellu cemetery with full Romanian military honors, his grave covered with mountains of red flowers from communist authorities, PCE leaders and delegations of Interbrigadistas from Romania, Poland, France, Germany, Bulgaria and the USSR.