Spy, gigolo and king of Andorra for a week: who was Boris Skossyreff?

AndorraNo one could have written his story. A spy, a gigolo, a con man, a charlatan who was the monarch of Andorra in 1934, for little more than a week. If thousands of documents didn't exist to prove it, Boris Skossyreff's life would seem like a delirious fiction, a spy novel written under the influence of morphine during the height of modernism. For twelve days in the summer of 1934, a Russian-born con man with ties to the Nazi regime proclaimed himself King of Andorra and placed the small Pyrenean principality at the center of international attention.

Skossyreff's figure has been shrouded in myths, exaggerations, and contradictory accounts for decades. However, director and writer Jorge Cebrián has dedicated more than ten years to tracing his story through archives across Europe, and has gathered nearly 6,000 documents that allow him to reconstruct his life in the book and the documentary. Boris Skossyreff, the con man who was king Part of the mystery and the liar's trajectory. "He's a character straight out of a movie, but with a truly detestable face," says Cebrián. "My intention was to show him as he was, so that the public could draw their own conclusions." At least, Cebrián confesses that Boris I of Andorra "is a character you can't sugarcoat or love without reservations." He was both a monster and a hero, a charlatan who, however "entertaining or witty" he might have been, was "deplorable."

Boris Skossyreff was born in Vilnius (present-day Lithuania) around 1896 or 1898 into an aristocratic family during the Tsarist era. The Russian Revolution of 1917 marked his exile. Like many other "White Russians," he fled the country after suffering persecution and the death of several family members. That forced escape made him stateless in an interwar Europe shaken by economic crisis, nationalism, and the rise of Nazism. "Boris grew up with the idea that he belonged to an elite that was suddenly expelled from history," explains Cebrián. "That profoundly marked his character. He always felt that the world owed him something."

The con man Skossyreff initially worked as a translator for British military units, given that he spoke more than 22 languages. In 1919, he was arrested in the United Kingdom for check fraud and administrative irregularities, which led to his expulsion from the country. From then on, his life became a succession of escapes, false identities, and scams.

During the interwar years, Skossyreff traveled around Europe using a Nansen passport, intended for Russian refugees, and later obtained Dutch documentation by posing as the Count of Orange. He eventually reached Mallorca, where he lived a life of luxury, excess, and affairs with women. "He didn't want to work; he wanted to live above everyone else," explains Cebrián, and all indications are that he did so by any means necessary, with contempt and deceit. He was especially prone to deception with women, such as the American Florence Marmon, the Englishwoman Phyllis Herd, and María Luisa Parat, whom he eventually married. All were deceived and exploited by his wealth and status, which allowed him to live comfortably and thus briefly recapture his former aristocratic lifestyle.

In Mallorca, he made his first contact with the National Socialist German Workers' Party. "We have clear evidence of his collaboration with the Nazis," asserts Cebrián. "It wasn't a casual relationship; he played an active role." From that meeting came the idea of ​​conquering Andorra with words. "Skossyreff was very intelligent, an avid reader, and knowledgeable about current events everywhere. The unstable situation convinced him that it was the moment to proclaim himself king of the small state between Spain and France," Cebrián explains. Andorra was strategic, a route between nations, where the Germans were active during World War II. In the early 1930s, the Principality was a microstate with political structures rooted in the Middle Ages, governed by a co-principality system and with virtually no popular sovereignty. Social unrest was growing. "He promised exactly what everyone wanted to hear."

From Andorra to the dungeon

The self-proclaimed aristocrat presented himself as a reformer with international connections and a seductive political project. He promised tax exemptions, the transformation of Andorra into a Monaco-style tax haven, the promotion of tourism and mountain sports, the creation of a casino, the connection of Mallorca with La Seu d'Urgell, and, above all, the restoration of the sovereignty of the Andorran people. "I knew they were tired of the co-princes and the local bigwigs always having the last word." After obtaining Andorran citizenship, the authorities managed to expel him following a fight between the con man and another man in a bar involving a Nazi-made pistol. Upon being expelled from the country, he settled in La Seu d'Urgell, where he attacked the episcopal co-prince, the then-bishop Justí Guitart i Vilardebó, even challenging him to a duel to the death and declaring war on him.

His strategy was not limited to political rhetoric. Skossyreff launched an intense media campaign that garnered international attention. Newspapers in the United States, Germany, and Argentina, as well as in Spain and France, covered the figure and his proposal. "He ran an absolutely spectacular communications campaign," Cebrián remarks. "He was very clear on how to use the media to build an image of legitimacy."

The summer of 1934 brought the culmination. Skossyreff drafted a Constitutional Charter proclaiming equal rights and radical economic liberalism, distributing copies among Spanish, French, and Andorran authorities. He proclaimed himself Boris I, King of Andorra. However, his reign lasted just over a week and a half. On July 20, 1934, Boris Skossyreff was arrested by the Civil Guard, taken first to Barcelona and then to Madrid, where he was convicted and expelled to Portugal. vagrancy and delinquent lawFor the first time, this was used with a king. "The state reacted quickly when it saw that this went beyond an extravagance," explains the director.

During World War II, he collaborated with the Nazis as a special agent within French labor camps and, later, in German interrogations, which led to his arrest by Soviet forces and exile to Siberia. He ended his days in West Germany, in Boppard, in 1989, and still presented himself as a king in exile. He wrote an autobiography in which he claimed that, disguised as a French officer, he was present at the meeting between the Allied leaders where they outlined their plans to drop the atomic bomb on Berlin. Skossyreff claims that he wrote a letter to Führer to warn him. The con man claimed that thanks to him the war ended, since Adolf Hitler committed suicide upon receiving the letter. Of course, one last lie to regain his heroic status.

For Cebrián, telling this story without sugarcoating it was essential. "If we take out the dark side, we turn him into a sympathetic character, and he wasn't," he states. "He was fascinating, yes, but also deeply detestable at many points." Both the book by Anem Editors and the documentary, available on 3cat, Filmin, and RTVA, want to let the viewer choose. "I'm not a good writer," Cebrián confesses. "There was no need to invent anything." Fiction wouldn't have held up.