José Robles

He supported the cause of the Spanish Republic, but his independent and outspoken views brought him in conflict with the Soviet Union's emissaries, who were gaining increasing control of the Republican government.

The American left-wing journalist Josephine Herbst, then on a visit to the Civil War front, found out that he had been arrested and shot as an alleged "spy for Francoists", and conveyed this information to Ernest Hemingway and Dos Passos who were in Madrid.

In a letter to the editor published in The New Republic in July 1939, Dos Passos wrote that it was not until he reached Madrid (after having spent a week in Valencia) that he got what he called "definite information from the then chief of the Republican counter-espionage service that Robles had been executed by a 'special section' (which I gathered was under control of the Communist Party) … Spaniards I talked to closer to the Communist Party took the attitude that Robles had been shot as an example to other officials because he had been overheard indiscreetly discussing military plans in a cafe.

"[1] According to research by writer Stephen Koch, the real reason Robles was killed was that he had been the translator of Yan Karlovich Berzin, a senior Soviet military envoy to Spain who knew no Spanish.

Hemingway condoned the killing, as "necessary in time of war", while Dos Passos, embittered by the death of his friend, broke away from the left altogether and started his move to the political right.