Clara Stauffer

Clara Stauffer (1904–1984) was a Spanish Falangist and Nazi ratline operator. She was a member of the Sección Femenina, a women's Falangist group, during the Spanish Civil War. She served as its chief propagandist and later as its head of foreign affairs. She was involved with the group's efforts to strengthen ties between Francoist Spain and Nazi Germany in World War II. After the war, she was one of the most prominent smugglers of Nazi fugitives, giving them shelter in Spain and arranging their travel to Argentina. Clara Stauffer was born in Madrid in 1904. Her father was Konrad Stauffer, a German brewer that had taken charge of the Mahou brewery after he immigrated to Spain in 1889. Her mother was Clara Sofía Loewe, a member of the prominent Loewe family. Stauffer spent some of her childhood in Germany, while also spending time among Madrid's high society. She was already a prominent figure in Madrid by 1931 due to her athletic accomplishments as one of the city's first female athletes, where she excelled in swimming and skiing. Stauffer won a swimming competition in 1931 by crossing the Peñalara lagoon in under two minutes, and in 1938 she was the first woman to attempt the Flying Kilometer skiing race of St. Moritz. She failed to complete the latter event, but at one point achieved a speed of . To maintain her athletic prowess, she insisted on walking wherever she traversed the city. Besides athletics, she was also multilingual and was able to play the piano. Stauffer moved back to Spain permanently in 1936. She was a member of the Sección Femenina and a close ally of its leader Pilar Primo de Rivera. During the Spanish Civil War, Stauffer worked as Sección Femenina's chief propagandist and was responsible for its press. She suggested "Auxilio Invierno" as the original name of the Nationalist charity organization during the Spanish Civil War, naming it after the Winterhilfe, both translating to "Winter Aid". Stauffer supported far-right politics and political leaders, keeping large portraits of Francisco Franco, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, Adolf Hitler, and Benito Mussolini on the wall in her office.