Since I was linked, I figure I might as well chime in here...
I tried to be both open-minded and objective in my statements about the A models, because there's not much hard evidence out there to "hang your hat on", so to speak. We know they existed, but we don't know precisely how many there were, and Radinger and Schick made a convincing claim about their existence and use in their Bf 109A-E book. Based on that research and digging through photos, I came up with at least 16 A's in Spanish service (including the V3, V4, and V6, which may or may not be 'cheating'). A pic of 6-17 recently surfaced which shows the aircraft in the standard 70/71/65 scheme of the B series... but of course, you can't see the damn oil cooler, which is the biggest visual cue I've seen to tell an A from a B. Despite that, I still feel fairly confident 6-17 is a B, based on the factory paint job. And this, of course, renders my Spanish 109 list obsolete. *sigh* That's the trouble with books... something else always shows up once it's done and published.
I've also come across new shots of Harder's 6-56 which clearly show the short exhausts of the earlier Jumo 210D, lending further credence to the idea that it was actually a B... an idea which David Nash lays out pretty well on the same page linked above. I'd also like to add that George Hopp is right, in that factory manuals only specify "Bf 109B", not B-1 or B-2. So, I'd say I was only half-right in the book when I said there's no such thing as a B-2... by that standard, there's also no such thing as a B-1!
The one thing I keep wondering is, what happened to all the Spanish Air Force records? Has anyone tried going through the Spanish archives to see if any delivery cards, maintenance records, strength reports or what have you might exist for these early aircraft? It's absolutely maddening to have this excellent photographic record of 16 or so aircraft, and not be able say with absolute certainty what they were. Well, eventually something will turn up which will cause us to collectively exclaim "Aha! That's it!"... until then, we're left with sorting through photos and fragmentary records.
But then that's part of the fun, isn't it?
Lynn