Antonio Camazón

Faustino Antonio Camazón Valentín (1901 – 19 October 1982) was a Spanish cryptographer and spy.

Biography At the age of twelve, he stowed away on a ship and arrived in Colombia. After being repatriated, his parents sent him to Madrid, where he stood out for his skills in mathematics, languages, and cryptography. According to his nephew, "he gave lessons at embassies and learned French, English, and German... He was part of the tertulia of Santiago Ramón y Cajal at the Café de Chinitas, and he mentions him in his memoirs as an enthusiast of cryptography."

As a commissioner and high-ranking officer in the Republican police, he solved several murders and at least one kidnapping. His debut as a cryptographer took place in North Africa during the search for Abd el-Krim, where he not only learned Arabic but eventually mastered four languages and came to know as many as twelve, including Japanese. A documentary about his life, Equipo D: Los códigos olvidados, directed by Jorge Laplace, premiered in Valladolid, was shown at the Seville European Film Festival in 2019, and aired on La 2 of Radiotelevisión Española on 28 April 2021.

Camazón was married to María Cadena, a nurse from Huesca, whom he met in 1938. When he learned she had been denounced, he helped her flee to France by providing a false identity and a guide to cross the Pyrenees. They later reunited in Paris. He amassed a personal library of 800 books in 150 languages, which was acquired in 1984 by historian Guillermo Redondo for the María Moliner Library at the University of Zaragoza.