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Spain Spain and France
While the Soviet Union appeared to most Spaniards to be
too
far away to pose any immediate threat, Spain's most
difficult
relations in the postwar years were with its European
neighbor to
the north, France. Spain's relations with France had been
troublesome since 1945, when France called for an Allied
invasion
of Spain to remove the last fascist dictator. When the
United
States and Britain refused to agree to such a course of
action,
France permitted anti-Franco forces to use France as a
base for
organizing raids into Spain. When some of these
infiltrators were
apprehended and executed in Spain in 1946, the Allies
declared
that Spain would be forbidden to join the UN while under
the
control of Franco. France was also the major obstacle to
Spain's
entry into the EC. Responding to the pressures of a strong
agricultural lobby, the French government succeeded in
delaying
Spanish membership in the EC
(see Spain and the European Community
, this ch.).
French policies also exacerbated Spain's most volatile
domestic political problem, that of Basque terrorism. For
years,
France maintained a policy of providing sanctuary to
terrorists,
who were seen as "resistance fighters." This policy became
less
tenable, however, after the democratization of Spain.
Following
the appearance of terrorist activity within France itself,
the
policy of sanctuary was markedly restricted, and by 1986
France
was cooperating with Spain in efforts to combat terrorist
activity
(see Threats to Internal Security
, ch. 5).
* * *
Two highly readable works dealing with political and
social
developments in the new democratic Spain are John Hooper's
The
Spaniards: A Portrait of the New Spain and Robert
Graham's
Spain: A Nation Comes of Age. A selection of papers
delivered at a conference conducted by the West European
Program
of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
deals
with the dominant issues facing Spain as the country
consolidates
its democratic system. Titled Spain in the 1980s
(edited
by Robert P. Clark and Michael H. Haltzel), it includes
insightful articles by leading Spanish political figures
as well
as papers prepared by American and British experts on
Spain.
A thorough and lucidly written examination of the
provisions
contained in the Spanish Constitution can be found in the
Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly in an article
by
George E. Glos. Updates and elaborations of laws
pertaining to
the Spanish governmental system are available in Spain:
A
Guide to Political and Economic Institutions, by Peter
J.
Donaghy and Michael T. Newton. This book provides the most
comprehensive treatment of Spain's major political and
economic
institutions and the first in-depth study of local and
regional
institutions to be published in English.
The rapid evolution of Spanish politics after Franco is
depicted in Democratic Politics in Spain, edited by
David
S. Bell. Richard Gunther, Giacomo Sani, and Goldie Shabad
provide
a comprehensive description of the development of
political
parties and the political orientations of the electorate
in
Spain After Franco: The Making of a Competitive Party
System. How these parties fared is the topic of the
insightful Spain at the Polls, 1977, 1979, and 1982: A
Study
of the National Elections, edited by Howard R.
Penniman and
Eusebio M. Mujal-Leon. Group political participation, as
manifested in the interest groups that influenced Spain's
political development, is emphasized in Politics and
Change in
Spain, edited by Thomas D. Lancaster and Gary Prevost.
An excellent background for the study of Spanish
foreign
relations may be found in James W. Cortada's Spain in
the
Twentieth-Century World. Although somewhat dated, it
covers
the major thrust of Spain's foreign policy both before and
after
Franco. Spain: Studies in Political Security,
edited by
Joyce Lasky Shub and Raymond Carr, also provides a useful
analysis of Spain's foreign policy goals. For a study of
Spain's
relations with the Latin American countries, see Howard J.
Wiarda's The Iberian-Latin American Connection:
Implications
for U.S. Foreign Policy. (For further information and
complete citations,
see
Bibliography.)
Data as of December 1988
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