RADIO LIBERTY, FROM GLORY TO SPOIL
Promoted by the United States government during the Cold War and active from 3:05 a.m. on March 23, 1959 to 10:00 a.m. on May 25, 2001, Radio Liberty was for many years the most powerful radio station in the world and employed nearly 200 people, the vast majority of whom were Spanish. Its facilities occupied – and still occupy – an area of 330,000m² of virgin land next to the Playa de Pals beach which, after the demolition of its characteristic antennas on March 22, 2006, has been progressively abandoned and plundered.
Only the work of some graffiti artists – like the artist's much-publicized intervention Marina Capdevila, who in the summer of 2018 painted a giant mural that covers the ceiling of the main building – has once again put Radio Liberty in the forefront of current news, without the successive news about its remodeling for the construction of some kind of equipment or about their definitive dismantling have come to fruition. Currently the facilities are in such a deplorable state of conservation that it is not too exaggerated to fear for their survival.
SYMBOL OF THE COLD WAR: THE OFFICIAL HISTORY
A few years after the end of World War II, at a time when a nuclear conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union could lead to the destruction of both countries – and by extension the annihilation of the planet –, the only realistic possibility of crossing the so-called "Iron Curtain" was through the transmission of radio waves (1).
The origin of Radio Liberty must be sought first in the foundation in New York, in June 1949, of the National Committee for a Free Europe, financed both by the United States Congress –through the CIA, acronym for Central Intelligence Agency: Central Intelligence Agency– and by private funds. With the aim of weakening the Soviet regime, Radio Free Europe established its headquarters in Munich and made its first shortwave broadcasts on July 4, 1950 to Czechoslovakia. That same year, the American Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia (ACLPR, AMCOMLIB, also known as the American Committee for Liberation from Bolshevism) was created, part of an ambitious US secret service project known as QKACTIVE, which from 1955 began to study various places in Spain, Portugal and North Africa for the construction of a new radio station.
Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty thus joined the US government's external radio and later television service, Voice of America (VOA), which, headquartered in Washington, had begun broadcasting on February 1, 1942, and which is currently – available in over 100 countries and in over 60 languages – considered one of the largest broadcasting groups in the world. Voice of America was the "official" foreign broadcaster of the United States, while Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, merged in 1976, were two broadcasters that were theoretically independent but not so much in reality, since at least until 1975 they were largely financed by the CIA.
Pals Beach was the ideal location to build a shortwave station that would allow American ideals of freedom and hope and their culture to reach the Soviet Union, although its true medium-to-long term objective was to bring about the fall of the communist regime.
At Platja de Pals, 2,700 km away from the Soviet Union, the engineer and later Colonel Steve Y. McGiffert found the ideal location to build a shortwave transmitter that would allow him to bring American ideals of freedom and hope and their culture to the Soviet Union, although his real objective in the medium-long term was to bring about the fall of the communist regime. Formed for the most part by sandy areas of low bushes, with few trees, only four fishermen's houses – restored to house the warehouses of the company in charge of preparing the land, the Sociedad Ibérica de Construcciones y Obras Públicas, and thus named with its acronym: SICOP – and a watchtower and far from any inhabited center, the land was very favored technically because it was located in front of the sea, which served as a reflection of the waves, considerably increasing the energy emitted.
Shortwave is the only radio signal in existence capable of propagating over long distances by multiple reflections in the layers of the atmosphere; at the optimum angle, the broadcasts propagated in such a way that for a period of two to three hours a day they could not be intercepted by the authorities of the Soviet Union. This is what the Americans called “Twilight immunity”, the moment when Radio Liberty broadcasts clearly reached their destination without the nearly 3,000 interference stations installed in the Soviet Union – a kind of “second iron curtain” meaningfully named the “War of the Waves” – being able to do anything to prevent it.
The paradoxical agreement between a government that advocated democracy and freedom and a fascist regime like the Spanish one was possible thanks to the intervention of the president of Radio Liberty from 1954 to 1975, Howland Sargeant (1911-1984). Sargeant had been the president of the first UNESCO General Conference held in Paris in 1951, which approved the entry of Spain into the organization (which would take place two years later). In 1958 the head of the Spanish government, General Francisco Franco, returned the favor to Sargeant by selling the requested land – approximately 333,500 m² – for 7,673,073 pesetas at the time (€46,116.10), which nevertheless continued to be owned by Spain, which from then on charged Radio Liberty 285,000 $ per year in rent.
Franco delegated to Minister Manuel Fraga Iribarne the monitoring of the process of assembling the station, and in 1958, construction of the highway and the main roads began and the first foundations of the future facilities were laid, arousing the first suspicions of the inhabitants of the area. The scale of the construction, which initially had the custody of the Civil Guard and later with its own private security service, motivated all kinds of speculation: There were people who believed that the 13 antennas that were erected over almost five years of work – with heights ranging from 59 to 169 m – were missile launch pads, while others raved about the possibility that it was a US Army submarine base hidden under the beach. The truth, however, is that unlike the Loran Base in L'Estartit (2) There were no military personnel on Radio Liberty.
THE MOST POWERFUL BROADCAST IN THE WORLD
The station would not acquire its definitive appearance, decisively transforming the horizon of Platja de Pals and the Empordanet, until the end of the 1960s, and was broadly divided into two clearly differentiated areas: the buildings for administration and technical installations, on the one hand, and the so-called antenna area, on the other. The building area was divided into three large blocks: the central administration and transmitter building, with two floors, occupied the center of the facilities, separated from the Diesel plant and its corresponding water tanks, located to the west, by a roundabout or roundabout. The central building was also located at a reasonable distance from the so-called “Building J”, located to its left, the place where the transmitters were switched to the different antennas on the beach and which, due to its high radio frequency levels, had restricted access: former Radio Liberty workers explain that if you entered it with a fluorescent lamp in your hand, it would light up. In fact, along the lines there were exhausted fluorescent tubes tied with wire to check whether a line had a radiating transmitter or not. Further east there was a second complex of single-storey buildings intended for garages and warehouses.
Regarding the antennas, they were of the “curtain” type, very directive, and their construction was very difficult due to the eminently sandy nature of the terrain. They were divided into four groups according to their orientation, since a few degrees of difference varied the destination of the emission by many kilometers: the groups “A” and “C”, identical, were the first to be built, and between their towers the radiating antennas and the reflector were erected. Both covered 9, 11, 15 and 17 MHz. Later, group “B” was added, with antennas that operated at 6, 7, 11 and 15 MHz, and finally group “D”, formed by the highest antennas. Located at the end of the beach, this group was the one that was installed later because the area was marshy and it took almost a year for the terrain to dry out. The towers supported the antenna elements and their corresponding reflector, tensioned by a series of cables like the antenna. All the towers and reflectors had a counterweight system studied down to the smallest detail and specially designed for windy days, quite common on the seafront.
Even today, the increasingly degraded casing of the luminous map that illustrated the geographical coverage of the radio in those years still hangs on a wall of the facilities.
Radio Liberty was equipped with the most advanced radio technology of the 20th century. By the late 1960s it was the most powerful station in the world with six shortwave transmitters of 250 kW each reaching a distance of 3,000 km (3). Among the thirteen metal towers, the total power reached 1,500 kW, with the particularity – at the initiative of the technical teams working at the station – that the combination of four 250,000 W transmitters in a single antenna (group "D") allowed the emission of a signal of up to 1 million W (1 MW amplified about 8 times by the antenna gain = about 8 million W coming out of Pals) that was projected over Moscow without any possibility of being intercepted, a signal that was broadcast for the first time on May 8, 1968 at 12:00 p.m. to an audience of more than 70 million people. The station's area of influence, in fact, went beyond the Soviet Union itself, also extending to the Caucasus and Baltic countries when the first bounce fell in this area, while the first bounce of the other stations fell in depopulated areas; even today, the increasingly degraded shell of the luminous map that illustrated the geographical coverage of the radio in those years still hangs on a wall of the facilities.
The site, obviously, had all the services and resources necessary to operate autonomously; apart from the engineers and technicians, it had gardeners, carpenters, masons, a medical service and even its own petrol service for the vehicles and diesel generators that in the event of a power outage could provide the necessary electricity 24 hours a day without interruption. In the warehouses there was a 95% of spare parts for each of the station's transmitters, while some of the spare parts were manufactured in the same facilities because they did not exist on the market. The supplies were purchased from the surrounding villages, so everyone won; especially, however, the workers, who beyond optimal economic conditions and significant discounts on the dining service also had insurance at beneficial prices and assistance for their families, without forgetting a free transport service to travel to the facilities, something basic at a time when many families still did not have their own vehicle: on May 2, 1960, the bus service was started by the SARFA company from Sant Antoni de Calonge to Platja de Pals, passing through the stops of the Azul gas station, the Hotel Trias, Sant Joan, Palafrugell, Pals and the Masos de Pals. The vehicle, known as “the SARFA of the Americans”, was a 25-seater Pegàs omnibus. The majority of Radio Liberty workers, who come from all over Spain and in some cases also from abroad, remember their time at the station as the best job they have had in their lives.
It is estimated that in the 1960s, nearly 200 people worked there, including administrators, technicians, maintenance personnel, translators and interpreters, although the most surprising thing is that the station's content was written and recorded in New York and Munich, where the different programming blocks were also organized in a total of 17 different languages (although Russian and Ukrainian were the majority). In the early years, the tapes arrived every day by plane and had to be picked up specifically at Barcelona airport, then they were sent through special high-quality telephone lines and by radio (Sant Climent was only in case of failure of the telephone lines); Finally – at the end of the 1980s – they were sent via satellite and received through one of the two satellite dishes that were installed at that time, currently the only one that remains standing (4).
Radio Liberty's mission was fundamentally to broadcast content, not to produce it., although it had a small recording studio for emergencies (in case the tapes did not arrive on time, for example). The information broadcast regarding Spain had to first pass through Franco's censorship, and the rest of the information also passed through political censorship departments in New York and the European headquarters in Munich.
The programming was structured into different time blocks and included all types of content: news had a very prominent role (they occupied the first ten minutes of each hour), followed by a series of variations structured around a press review, information from the different correspondents, cultural, folkloric, sports, musical and literary programs, without forgetting a space dedicated to listeners' letters - to which the station gave great importance - nor to advertisements about the United States and its lifestyle.
While he was confined to his home, the then head of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, acknowledged that he was able to know everything that was happening thanks to the broadcasts of Radio Liberty from Pals..
THE LONG DECAY
The death of dictator Francisco Franco on November 20, 1975 was a first blow for the station, which from that moment until 1990 continued to operate in Pals without any agreement with the new democratic Spanish government, based on an old and expired agreement and seeing criticism of its status as a propaganda weapon of the United States increase: “It was a weapon that did not exist to spread culture, but to attack other peoples.”, says the former secretary general of the Spanish Communist Party Santiago Carrillo in the documentary Goodbye, Liberty (Carlos Jover, 2007).
Merged with Radio Free Europe in 1976, the truth is that beyond some budget and staff cuts that affected the entire station, Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty continued to operate with complete normality, and in 1987 it saw the installation of what would be its last transmitter, a three-valve Marconi with almost automatic operation (which replaced the first installed, the 100KW Telefunken). Transmissions continued even after the fall of the "Iron Curtain" resulting from the disintegration of the Soviet Union (USSR). This dissolution culminated, between March 11, 1990 and December 25, 1991, with the independence of the fifteen republics that were part of it, but had one of its greatest moments of uncertainty in the attempted coup that took place between August 19 and 21, 1991; then, while he was confined to his home, the then head of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, acknowledged that he was able to know everything that was happening thanks to the broadcasts of Radio Liberty from Pals..
Although the end of the Cold War, the administration of US President Bill Clinton decided to continue with the broadcasts of Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, which in 1994 became managed by the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the federal agency of the United States government responsible for overseeing all non-military radio and television transmissions of the federal government, created that same year, in 1995 the station's headquarters were moved to Prague and many European programs were eliminated, at the same time as its activity increased in the Middle East.
In 1998, Radio Free Iraq and Radio Farda were founded, and not long later, a series of situations and perhaps wrong decisions would end up causing the end of transmissions from Platja de Pals: the last broadcast would take place at 10:00 in the morning on May 25, 2001. “The creation of democratic institutions and market economies in the former Soviet Union has significantly diminished the usefulness of the Platja de Pals station as a U.S. government relay service, so its continuity can no longer be justified, either from an operational or financial point of view.”, stated a statement signed by Brian Conniff, acting director of the International Broadcasting Office of the Broadcasting Council, on May 25. Conniff also justified the closure of Radio Liberty by the existence of “different more advanced media and the availability of other relay enclaves to cover the former Soviet Union” (5).
Conservationist entities wanted it dismantled, while others advocated converting the space into a Cold War telecommunications museum.
AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE
Shortly afterwards, and despite the fact that the land lease was valid until 2015, the governments of Spain and the United States agreed to dismantle the station. The first step in its demise was the transfer of the facilities to Radio Nacional de España (RNE) in 2002. The main dismantling works of the old station took place in February 2003, at a total cost of €274,972.81 (more than 45 million pesetas): the main destination of the equipment and recycled materials, in addition to scrap metal, was that of spare parts and future museum pieces for the RNE broadcasting center in Majadahonda (Madrid).
Regarding the antennas that stretched for more than a kilometer along the beach, their fate had already begun to turn with the approval, on September 28, 2001, of Royal Decree 1066 / 2001 on “Conditions for the protection of the public radio domain, restrictions on radio emissions and health protection measures against radio emissions”, derived from European Recommendation 1999/519 / EC1 relating to “the exposure of the general public to electromagnetic fields”. The new regulations made it enormously difficult for the station to be put back into operation, since it would have been necessary to apply 250,000 W protection spheres to the antennas, and this fact, combined with the supposed poor condition in which they were due to lack of maintenance, would be their death sentence, but not without generating a notable public debate for quite some time: Conservation organizations and the state government's Environment Delegate in Girona, Francesc Busquets Palahí, wanted it dismantled, while other personalities, such as the rector of the University of Girona, Joan Batlle Grabulosa, advocated converting the space into a Cold War telecommunications museum; Joan Solé Viñas, from the Meteorological Service of the Generalitat, also proposed reusing one of the towers to calculate the CO₂ density of the air.
Despite the many voices raised against their total destruction, in May 2005 the Spanish Department of the Environment began to study a proposal from the central government to dismantle the antennas by means of controlled explosions, a demolition that would finally take place at 15:55 on 22 March 2006, five minutes before the scheduled time. It took up to 18.7 kg of Goma 2 explosives but just over five seconds to bring down the 700 tons of material from the towers – some of which had taken more than a year to be erected – as well as exceptional security measures: an exclusion perimeter of 300 m by land, 500 m by sea and 2 km by air, in addition to the deployment of a hundred agents. The dismantling, with a cost of 1 million to eliminate the antennas and 2.7 million to eliminate or adapt the buildings, concluded in mid-August 2006 without any commitment between the administrations about the future of the space.
The existence of Radio Liberty saved the site from a safe urbanization, although at first there was talk of the possibility that some of the buildings would be used as information offices for the future Montgrí, Medes Islands and Baix Ter Natural Park. (created in 2010 and of which the station's land forms part), the truth is that the facilities are currently abandoned and in an increasingly deplorable state of conservation.
The Pals City Council preserves a fragment of the towers which is currently integrated into a roundabout near the station.
The latest news regarding the future of the facilities had emerged shortly before: in 2015, the Mar Foundation, based in Palafrugell, announced that it had obtained the concession for 50 years of the old Radio Liberty facilities to build a large biosphere conservation center, named after Aqua. According to the website of this foundation, this center would have “the mission of connecting the societies of the world with the main elements that create the physical, chemical and organic basis of life in the biosphere and to work actively for their knowledge and conservation.».
But on July 13, 2020, The Parliament of Catalonia approved the Resolution 850/XII, which urges the Government to halt the processing of the concession for the use of the Ràdio Liberty sites, discarding the Aquam project, and urging the relevant administration, according to the signed agreement, to remove the Ràdio Liberty installations, respecting the Archaeological sites that there can be and the needs to carry out projects compatible with environmental values.
The Association Save the Beach of Pals, the Catalan History Circle (CCH) and Radioliberty.org, believe that, within these lands, the wetlands and dune systems, habitats of priority community interest, should be renaturalized, conserved and monitored. Rehabilitate the central office building of the station, for the creation of a Museum, Research and Dissemination Center of Radio Liberty and the Cold War, which will publicize its decisive contribution to the history of the 20th century; for an information and interpretation center for the Montgrí, Medes Islands and Baix Ter Natural Park; as well as for a UNESCO Headquarters, in memory of one of the first directors of the station.
CLAIM AN URGENT PROTECTION OF RADIO LIBERTY GROUND
We need your support to protect the habitats and prevent the degradation of the archaeological and industrial heritage of Platja de Pals.
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Thanks to Francesc Mányik, Vannesa Mányik and Vladimir Borachock for their tireless work compiling information, as well as to many other friends who wish to remain anonymous. And thanks to José Luis Roche and Clara Feliu for their commendable work in this research.
Article written by Daniel Ortega del Pozo: writer and researcher; Jorge Rios: writer, researcher and radio program director Enigma Report en Radio latja d'Aro; Pau Roig: redactor de la Revista del Baix Empordà. First published in Revista del Baix Empordà in the year 2020.
Notes
1. “Iron Curtain” is the name by which the anti-communist political and media media of the West designated, from the years of the Cold War, the borders between the Western countries and the socialist countries of Eastern Europe and the USSR. The term, in fact, was coined by the former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in a conference in 1946 to refer to the border, physical but above all ideological, that divided Europe in two during the Second World War.
2. With an area of 351,800m² and located approximately seven kilometres from Radio Liberty, the Loran station in L'Estartit was a former military base of the United States Coast Guard. It was part of a network of seven stations in the Mediterranean that functioned as transmission points for the Loran C navigation system for ships of the United States Navy. Inaugurated in 1961 and with an antenna 190 m high, it ceased to function in 1995 when satellite positioning became hegemonic in navigation systems. Twenty military personnel and four civilians were assigned there in two-year shifts. Although they are located within the Montgrí Natural Park, the land is currently in a state of abandonment similar to that of Radio Liberty; owned by the Ministry of Defence, they have been auctioned off four times without success.
3. The first Radio Liberty transmission, on March 23, 1959 at 03:05, was made with a 100 kW Telefunken transmitter, protected by a tarpaulin because the building was not yet finished. The antenna used was a provisional rhombus and the power supply came from a diesel generator.
4. If any of the content delivery systems failed or when telephone or satellite communications were cut off, Ràdio Liberty also had a small radio reception center in Sant Climent de Peralta, about 20 km from Platja de Pals. This center picked up the radio signal emitted expressly for this purpose, which was then retransmitted to the main station.
5. “The US closes the imposing Radio Liberty transmitter in Girona”, May 26, 2001. The Country.
Cover photo: View of the antennas, 2005. Saint-Aniol under license CC BY-SA 3.0.
Article creation date: 1/13/2021.
To find out more information and see images you can visit the Radio Liberty Virtual Museum at Radioliberty.org.
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