Yes, the Forum has too poor appearance now:
– light blue letters in chapter’s and thread’s titles are barely visible on white background;
– terribly small ugly font with microscopic letters in the posts;
– to find and to read “the way to the Forum” in upper left corner of the page (I mean: Home > Forum > …), I need special magnifying glass, because those letters are smaller, than microscopic size !

And, finally, I found the “Login” button only after SIX attempts ! For what purpose this button is located so-o-o-o high on the page, almost in the page corner point, where most part of the Forum members will not think to look for this button ?

Thus, the Forum has suffered the fate of most modern Software, when a crowd of loafers-programmers make changes to the programs – and make them regularly – but those changes are absolutely unnecessary for MOST users.

So, the overall assessment of Forum changes is “VERY POOR”…

Sad, it is very sad.

This decision have the political base. And such decisions are not always made on the basis of considerations of utility and practicality.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-russia-helicopters/pentagon-cancels-plans-to-buy-russian-helicopters-idUSBRE9AC17720131113
https://www.rferl.org/a/afghanistan-mi-17-helicopters/25167681.html
https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2016/11/20/us-to-stop-buying-russian-helicopters-for-afghanistan/

Sadly, those “new” pictures do not help in resolving the main question about the type of plane.

After the careful reading of the thread I want to do some clarifications about the “Russian trace” [this is very popular excuse today: if someone can not explain something – “look for the Russian trace !”:eagerness:]:

1) Almost no one of Russian civil planes from that period, and most part of military ones – before the War – had three-bladed propeller due to complexity in manufacturing of such airscrews. They had two-bladed airscrews mainly (and such trend was common for most part of World aviation then). The exception here was the Lisunov Li-2 – license-built DC-3 aircrafts; but here our manufacturers were required to comply with US technology and design of plane parts. And there were very few other plane types with three-bladed propellers in Russia. For example, all new generation fighters, designed in the end of the Thirties – the beginning of the Fourties, had those three-bladed airscrews.

2) All civil registrations of Russian planes during that period were alphanumeric, in the following form: CCCP-A999 or -A9999, where “A” means any letter of Russian alphabet, and “999” and “9999” mean the set of different digits. We do not see such registration – or its part – on mysterious photo here.

3) What could a Russian plane do in Spain after the defeat of the Republican forces ? I mean not Russian planes, transferred to Spain for Civil War, but I mean some “aircraft, which could made some long-distance flight”. All diplomatic relations between the USSR and Spain were stopped in 1939, and were restored in 1977 only. This means, that any other contacts were cancelled too, including any transport connections – even for set some world record in aviation area.

4) The Gribovskiy G-17 and G-19 were the gliders of usual types. All Polikarpov’s planes “from I-160 to I-180” were the fighters; not all designations from this range were used.
I-161, I-163, I-164, I-165, I-166, I-167 – all were the versions of famous I-16 fighter ( https://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?143648-Please-identify-this-plane&p=2416545#post2416545 , https://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?143648-Please-identify-this-plane&p=2416907#post2416907 ). Some of them were built as prototypes, and later they were produced under I-16 designation with the addition of version designations. Other were built as mockups only, or they remained as paper projects, because they were not adopted by Air Forces.
I-169, I-170 were the deep modernization of I-153 biplane; both designs were the biplanes, not adopted.
I-172, I-173 were the versions of I-17 single-engine fighter; they were not adopted.
I-174 was heavy gun fighter; it was tested, but project was cancelled.
I-175 project was cancelled too.
Other numbers between “160” and “180” were not used.
So, all those planes were military exclusively, and their designs had nothing common with the mysterious airplane.
And if some project was cancelled in the USSR, no one designer was able to offer his project for another (for example, for foreign) customer (as some foreign inventors did – like J. W. Christie, US american tank designer; when his designs were not adopted by American army, he offered his projects to several foreign counries, including Russia and Great Britain), because all designs and projects were the Soviet State Property. And if some person tried to transfer his designs to some foreigners, this person was declared the traitor of the Native land and was killed, or sentenced to life imprisonment.

In conclusion, I repeat my earlier words: this is not Russian type anyway ! (simple I can not place here all pictures of all Russian planes of that period to let You see their general appearances).

If we shall talk about some foreign aircraft, my opinions are below:

1) I have asked Mr Leandro Escorsell Casablancas, the creator and owner of this blog ( http://leandroaviacion.blogspot.ru/ ), dedicated to Spanish aviation, about this mysterious photo. In his opinion, “this airplane model is not any Spanish military aircraft of war or post-war time, and not Spanish civilian; this photo does not apply to any Spanish aerodrome, although the photo was sold on Spanish auction”.

2) Black spot on the engine nacelle looks like simple defect in photographic film or print, because its colour and density look unnatural, and are too different from the background colour and print structure. And if this is exhaust – all the smoke from the engine would go to the cockpit – it is not very nice, You agree with me ?

3) Why You all think, that the registration of plane is EC-xxx ? With the same success there may be other registrations – F-Axxx, I-Axxx, and even XA/XB/XC-xxx ! And, of course, the both CC8 and FC8 are too strange for three letter codes, aren’t they ? Note – the first letter on the image is too squared; this letter looks not like a “C” letter, but looks like “E” or “F” letters; other letters are unsuitable here. The last letter transforms into another symbol already – on earlier picture I saw stylized “S” letter instead of “8” digit. Thus, we must operate with EC8, FC8, or with ECS, FCS letters. But even in such case we could be on wrong way !

4) Why no one talks about the inscription on the fuselage? I see the traces of at least 3 words there, and the second word is short, in 2 – 3 letter. Maybe this is the word like the “de” word in Spanish or French languages ?

5) Note the pieces of postage stamps on the photo’s back. We see the “CANA…” part of some word on one of pieces. Remembering, that all stamps have the countries names on them, we can assume, this is “Canada”. But we also can assume, these are “Canarias” islands, and this assumption looks “very Spanish”. Whether Canarias islands issued their own stamps at that period ? The Internet search shows, that all their stamps had the “Espana” name on them, with the “Canarias” word overprinted above. But in our case we see the “CANA…” word is printed typographically, not with hand stamp. At that time the people could use usual photo prints as post cards – they could write some text on the print, add the adresses of the sender and receiver, and add the post stamps. But I write all this for the reason, that our picture could be made on Canarias islands, not in continental Spain.

So, the deeper we dig – the more questions we get…

Beermat wrote:

Cockpit and tail look Russian somehow.

No, it is not Russian plane anyway.

Gerard wrote:

Syrian Mi-4. But what colors on the roundel? Outer ring red or green?

It is green obviously. I seem, this image of 1961 – 1963 period https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Syria