As many of the factories of the Hispano-Suiza had survived the war, the air ministry ordered them to produce a fighter that should equip the Spanish Air Force's fighter squadrons. In order to take a model, the air ministry ordered 25 aircraft from Germany, which would be delivered by train in two batches, the first one with the airframes and the second one loaded with the wings, the weaponry and the tail. However, due to the war, only the first batch arrived loaded with airframes of the Bf.109G-2 and Heinkel He.111H (which would also be manufactured by CASA, another Spanish company) buying that way the production license of the Bf.109G. Meanwhile, this same company, carried out some experiments by fitting a Hispano-Suiza HS-122-89 engine to the airframe of an old Bf.109E-3. It was tested unarmed in 1944 at the Cuatro Vientos airfield, in Madrid, but the test results were unsatisfactory.
In order to try to fix the shortage of available engines that hampered the manufacturation project, Hispano decided to employ the new but not very reliable Hispano-Suiza HS-12-Z-89 (which delievered 1300hp of power) engine in one of the airframes which received the name of Hispano HA-1109-J1L and flew for the first time on 2nd March 1945. However, as the results weren't satisfactory yet, the project was abandoned and that variant never reached the serial production.
As the engine was the main problem for the type to fly, the Spanish authorities tried to get some original Daimler-Benz DB.605 engines in order to fit them to the remaining airframes and copy them, but they couldn't get any of them due to the blockade that allied powers had set on Francoist Spain. Therefore, they decided to fit some Hispano-Suiza 12Z-17 engines (rated at 1282hp), and the test results weren't satisfactory yet but somehow they weren't as bad as the previous HA-1109-J1L, so it was decided to place a production order of 200 exemplars in 1951 under the denomination of HA-1109-K1L.
A different arrangement of armament was tested. One version was armed with two outdated Italian Breda-SAFAT 12,7mm placed in the wings, another one was tested with two 20mm cannons placed in underwing gondolas and, another one was fitted with 20mm cannons placed in the wings. This last configuration showed to be the best one as they could be fitted with underwing rockets too.
Of the original production order of 200 HA-1109-K1L, only a few of them were manufactured because in 1951 they adquired some surplus Rolls-Royce Merlin engines which were fitted to another airframe, which received the provisional denomination of HA-1109-M1L and showed excellent results, so it was decided to use that engine for the fighter project.
The existing HA-1109-K1L served briefly with the "Escuadrón de experimentación en vuelo" (Flight Testing Squadron), Escuela de Caza de Morón (Morón's Fighter School) and Escuadrón Nº23 (No.23 Squadron) based in Reus, Catalonia.
Sources:
1. https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispano_Aviación_HA-1112 (translated)
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispano_Aviación_HA-1112
3. http://www.elgrancapitan.org/foro/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=19285 (translated)
4. https://forum.valka.cz/topic/view/182152
5. Salamander Books - The Complete Book of Fighters
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