He was even more alarmed by what he perceived as the revolutionary tendencies that started after the electoral success of the Popular Front in early 1936 and believed that they could not be controlled by the legal government.
[5] In late May 1936 in Reigate, Bolín and his family met with Paco Andes, a former cabinet minister of Miguel Primo de Rivera.
The flight itself was planned over lunch at Simpson's-in-the-Strand, where Bolín met with Douglas Francis Jerrold, the conservative Roman Catholic editor of The English Review, and Major Hugh Pollard.
The bombers were necessary to break the blockade of the Moroccan waters by Loyalist Spanish warships and enable Franco's troops to reach the mainland.
[citation needed] In return for his assistance, Bolin was appointed by Franco honorary captain of the Spanish Foreign Legion.
[4] He also became Franco's chief press officer and during the Spanish Civil War was responsible for taking journalists on tours of the various battlefields.
According to Noel Monks, whenever correspondents came across a group of newly executed Republicans, typically behind a farmhouse in a recently captured village, Bolín would spit on them and call them "vermin".
After the fall of Málaga to Italian forces, which had been sent by Mussolini to support Franco’s rebellion, Koestler was sheltering with Sir Peter Chalmers Mitchell, a 72 year-old-retired zoologist (and driving force behind Whipsnade Zoo), who had also provided safe haven to Bolín’s own uncle and aunt and their five daughters during the early months of the rebellion.