en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Division

In the context of this article, the statement is too broad and becomes factually wrong for the period leading into the Blue Division's creation in 1941.

Authoritative sources distinguish Spanish neutrality from Spanish non-belligerence:

• The U.S. National Archives states that Spain under Franco "began the war as an avowed non-belligerent, and only in October 1943, did it formally declare neutrality."
• A Cambridge University Press article explains that Spain moved from neutrality to non-belligerence on 12 June 1940, then only later started a slow return toward neutrality.

So, when the article says Spain "formally remained neutral" in this section about the wartime setting that led to the Blue Division, it is misstating Spain's official status for much of the relevant period. A more accurate wording would note that Spain was neutral at first, but officially non-belligerent from June 1940 until October 1943.

This wording is misleading because it treats the Viriatos as a specific military division. Scholarly work on Portuguese volunteers in the Spanish Civil War says that no such formation was actually created.

A peer-reviewed article on the subject states: "Contrary to the popular belief, so called Legion Viriatos was never created; this name was used to describe all the Portuguese who decided to fight on general Franco's side."

If even a "Legion Viriatos" was never formally created, then describing these volunteers as having fought in a "Viriatos Division" is incorrect. The accurate description is that they fought as Portuguese volunteers commonly known as Viriatos, not in a formal division of that name.

This sentence overstates how many of the repatriates were members of the Blue Division and related volunteer units.

Spanish archival records in PARES describe the 286 Spaniards repatriated on the Semiramis as a mixed group: 248 members of the Blue Division, 34 civilian internees, and 4 people who had been taken to the USSR as children in 1937–1938. That means the full total of 286 cannot correctly be described as "these men" from the Blue Division, Blue Legion, or SS volunteer company.

The article may be conflating the total number of Spaniards repatriated on the ship (286) with the smaller number of Blue Division-related returnees. The archival breakdown shows that not all 286 belonged to those military formations.