Spanish Novelist,Camilo Jose Cela, Spied For Franco's Regime

Madrid - One of Spain's greatest modern novelists was an informer for Franco's fascist regime and betrayed fellow intellectuals during the 1960s, according to recently discovered official records.

Camilo Jose Cela, the last Spaniard to win the Nobel prize for literature, continued to inform against other authors and academics even when they thought he had joined an emerging front of dissident writers.

The revelations have come from the well-known historian Pere Ysas, who found papers showing that Cela, who died two years ago, had volunteered advice to Franco's information ministry and suggested some dissident writers could be bribed, tamed and"reconverted" by the generalisimo's regime.

The claims will add to the legend of the controversial and flamboyant Cela, who was accused of stealing ideas, plagiarism and using ghost-writers during his career.

He denied all the allegations, but had a seemingly infinite capacity for provoking controversy and creating enemies.

Mr Ysas's discovery comes at an uncomfortable time for Spain as it considers how to deal with the legacy of the Franco period. It also raises the question of which other intellectuals were informers - or informed upon.

The historian said he found an internal report to Spain's then information minister, Manuel Fraga, who ran the censor's office, based on ideas volunteered to ministry officials by Cela after a Spanish writers' conference in 1963.