The name may not immediately ring any bells, but Stuart Christie, born in Partick, has gone down in the Spanish history books as the ‘Tartan Kamikaze’.

The son of who he described as "a hard-drinking trawlerman and a hairdresser", Christie was an anarchist figure who came close to assisting in a plot to assassinate General Francisco Franco, Spain’s military dictator who served from 1939 until his death in 1975.

The remarkable story is not one well known in his native Glasgow,a city which celebrates the life of those who fought in the Spanish Civil War via the ‘La Pasionaria’ - the Clydeside statue of Spanish Republican politician Dolores Ibárruri.

Stuart Christie

Christie was raised by his mother and grandmother, going to school in Blantyre, and it was thanks to his Gran that he was instilled with a passion for social justice and anarchism.

Leaving school at 14, he worked as a dental apprentice, before moving to England to take up work as a sheet metal apprentice.

And it was there he met exiled Spaniards and joined in them in their quest to overthrow the Spanish dictator. The exiles sent Christie to Madrid (via Paris) with express instructions to assassinate General Franco.

Christie, then just 18, told his Gran he was away to Europe pick grapes, and made his away across Europe to the Spanish capital by hitch-hiking, concealing one kilo of plastic explosives by taping them to his body and wearing a woolly jumper his Gran had knitted him.

However, on his arrival in Madrid in August of 1964 his card was already marked, with the Spanish secret police aware of his arrival after having infiltrated the exiled group of anarchists in France and the UK.

Soon he was arrested by Spanish secret police when attempting to collect instructions from an American Express office in the city centre, while in the company of a local contact.

The statue of La Pasionaria, Dolores Ibárruri, erected in 1977 at the Clydeside in Glasgow.

The Spanish press reported that Christie was a member of the 'Glasgow Federation of Anarchists', who was detained after being caught with various items of bomb-making equipment, some of which were hidden in a bag of salt.

The press also reported that the arrest brought protests in Edinburgh when the news arrived here, with various members of the public gathering outside the Spanish consulate in anger at his arrest.

After signing a confession, he was sentenced to death by the Spanish courts, yet, following appeals from the British consul saw his sentence reduced to 20 years in prison.

And out of the 20 years, remarkably, he only ended up serving three and half, being released after the government listened to various appeals for clemency (according to their official records).

The document detailing the termination of Stuart Christie's 20 year prison sentence

Returning to the UK, he became an active part of the British anarchist movement, and took up work as a writer, founding the Cienfuegos Press publishing house and the online Anarchist Film Channel.

And in 2005, Christie published his autobiography, Granny Made Me an Anarchist, detailing the remarkable events that happened in his life at a young age, and the journey which took him from Partick to Spain via Blantyre, London and Paris.