He took part in the Spanish Civil War as a Commissioner of War, in both the bloody battles of Brunete and Teruel. In 1939, he tried to leave for France, but he was arrested and confined in a concentration camp, from which he ran away and, disguised, returned to Galicia in 1942, relying on a supposed amnesty. But that did not happen, so he decided to go into exile in Mexico. In that country, he tried to be able to make a better living as a mechanic, with some attempts to introduce a "bomb-throw-machine" of his invention to the United States Army.