The ship was commissioned by the Mexican government as Zacatecas at the shipyard Echavarietta y Larrinaga in Cádiz as an armed troop transport built and arrived at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in July 1936 in the hands of the nationalists, the ship according to the "first martyr" of the Franco- Revolution named José Calvo Sotelo . The Calvo Sotelo was converted into a gunboat and put into service in 1938. Together with the miner Vulcano , the Calvo Sotelo brought the republican destroyer on the night of December 29-30, 1938José Luis Díez near Gibraltar. In 1952 the ship was assigned to the reserve and decommissioned.