Spain and the Process of European Integration, 1957-85 (St Antony's Series)

233 Pages·2000·0.57 MB·English

by  Julio Crespo MacLennan

To my parents, with gratitude
Since I began writing for the public I have hardly written a
page in which the word Europe does not appear with symbolic
aggression. For me, all Spanish afflictions begin and end with
this word.
José Ortega y Gasset, El Imparcial, 1909
Contents
List of Abbreviations and Acronyms ix
Acknowledgements xi
Introduction 1
1 Spain and the Early Process of European
Integration, 1945–47 9
1. 1. The historical background: the concept of ‘Europe’ in
Spain 9
1. 2. The Franco regime and postwar Europe 14
1. 3. The role of Europeanism in Spanish politics 23
2 The Spanish Approach to the European
Community, 1957–62 37
2. 1. The Spanish reaction to the creation of the European
Community 37
2. 2. The reasons for Spain’s application to the European
Community and its impact on Spanish politics 40
2. 3. The application to the European Community and the
Spanish reaction 54
2. 4. The reaction in Europe 60
3 From the Congress of Munich to the Preferential
Agreement, 1962–70 65
3. 1. The Congress of Munich and its consequences 65
3. 2. The initiation of negotiations with the European
Community 70
3. 3. An alternative Europeanism 81
3. 4. The preferential agreement 88
4 The Crisis of the Franco Regime in European
Perspective, 1970–75 94
4. 1. The enlargement of the European Community and its
consequences 94
vii
4. 2. The increasing tension with Europe 98
4. 3. The democratic opposition and Europe 105
4. 4. The final crisis of the Franco regime 113
5 The Spanish Transition to Democracy and the
European Community, 1975–77 121
5. 1. The first government of the monarchy 123
5. 2. The European Community and the cause of democracy
in Spain 127
5. 3. The first Suarez government 136
5. 4. The first democratic elections 146
6 The Negotiations of Democratic Spain with the
European Community, 1977–85 150
6. 1. Beginning negotiations 150
6. 2. The Spanish political consensus in relation to the
European Community 154
6. 3. The stagnation of negotiations with the European
Community 159
6. 4. The Spanish political crisis and the attempted coup d’état 165
6. 5. Civil society and the European Community 169
6. 6. The Spanish Socialist Party in power 171
6. 7. The culmination of negotiations: Stuttgart, Athens and
Fontainebleau 174
Epilogue and Conclusion 180
The European Community as the external factor of change 182
Europeanism as a mechanism of domestic change 185
Chronology 189
Notes 191
Bibliography 208
Index 218
viii
List of Abbreviations and
Acronyms
ACNP Asociación Católica Nacional de Propagandistas (National
Catholic Association of Propagandists)
AECE Asociación Española de Cooperación Europea(Spanish
Association for European Cooperation)
AGMAE Archivo General del Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores(General
Archive of the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs)
AP Alianza Popular(Popular Alliance)
BOE Boletín Oficial del Estado(State’s Official Gazette)
CAP Common Agricultural Policy
CCOO Comisiones Obreras(Workers’ Commissions)
CDU German Christian Democratic Party
CEDI Centro Europeo de Documentación e Información (European
Centre of Documentation and Information)
CEOE Confederación Española de Organizaciones Empresariales
(Spanish Confederation of Business Organizations)
CEPYME Confederación Española de la Pequeña y Mediana
Empresa
CICE Comisión Interministerial para el estudio de las Comunidades
Europeas (Interministerial Commission for the Study of
the European Communities)
CIU Convergencia i unió (Catalan nationalist Christian
Democratic Party)
CNT Confederación Nacional de Trabajadores(Workers’ National
Confederation)
COREPER Committee of Permanent Representatives
CSU German Christian Social Union
DSCD Diario de Sesiones del Congreso de los Diputados (Spanish
Parliament debates)
EC European Community
ECDU European Christian Democratic Union
ECS German Conservative Party
ECSC European Coal and Steel Community
ECTU European Conference of Trade Unions
ECU European Currency Unit
EDCEE Equipo Democristiano del Estado Español (Christian
Democratic Group of the Spanish State)
ix
x List of Abbreviations
EEC European Economic Community
EFTA European Free Trade Association
EPC European Political Cooperation
EPU European Payments Union
ETA Euzkadi Ta Askatasuna
Euratom European Atomic Energy Community
FRUS Foreign Relations of the United States
GATT General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
ICFTU International Confederation of Free Trade Unions
OECD Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development
OEEC Organization for European Economic Cooperation
OID Oficina de Información Diplomática (Diplomatic Infor-
mation Office)
MEP Member of the European Parliament
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization
PCE Partido Comunista de España(Spanish Communist Party)
PNV Partido Nacionalista Vasco(Basque Nationalist Party)
PRO Public Record Office
PSOE Partido Socialista Obrero Español (Spanish Socialist
Workers’ Party)
SI Socialist International
SPD Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (German Social
Democratic Party)
UCD Unión de Centro Democrático(Democratic Centre Union)
UGT Unión General de Trabajadores(General Workers Union)
UNCTAD United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization
Acknowledgements
I have dedicated five years of my life to writing this book. The first
four were used to write my doctoral thesis, and the last one to convert
this thesis into a book. During this period I have accumulated a
considerable number of personal debts. I am indebted to Dr Charles T.
Powell, who supervised me until he left Oxford, and continued follow-
ing my research closely despite the hassle of Madrid academic life and
Spanish politics. I would also like to thank him for a long period of
friendship, which goes back to 1988, when I arrived at University
College, Oxford as an undergraduate. The other major personal debt
is to Mr Anthony J. Nicholls, who supervised me for the last year and
took the patience to read several drafts of my thesis until he consid-
ered it had reached an acceptable level. I would also like to thank Dr
Fernando Guirao for a very critical but constructive eight-hour
conversation about my thesis.
I owe the privilege of publishing with St Antony’s Macmillan series
to two people: Dr Eugene Rogan, the general editor of the series, who
welcomed the manuscript, and Dr Herminio Martins who wrote a
favourable report with very useful suggestions for improving the final
version of the book.
As far as financial matters are concerned I would like to express my
gratitude to the Fundación Marcelino Botín, which awarded me a four-
year scholarship to subsidize the expenses for my research.
Last but not least, I am indebted to a very considerable number of
friends and colleagues, both at Oxford and Madrid who provided me
with academic advice, moral support or simply contributed to many
of the happy moments which this period of my life has offered.
Although mentioning them all would take too much space, each one
knows the place he/she deserves in this thesis.
J C M
Oxford
xi

Introduction
The study of Spain and the process of European integration may
initially seem a marginal topic due to the fact that Spain was isolated
from mainstream Europe until recent times. An attempt to ascertain
the influence of the European Community on Spain’s political devel-
opment may appear equally discouraging. For a historian dealing with
such a recent period, political science and international relations
provide useful explanations for the problems encountered in doing
research into this field. Regime transformations in southern Europe,
and particularly in Spain have received much scholarly attention over
the last decades, yet the international factors affecting them have
been generally neglected, undoubtedly due to the widespread notion
that political changes must be examined within their own context
and that the international dimension plays a very limited role. If we
refer to the theorists of transitions, neither the functionalist nor the
actor-oriented theories of transitions seem to take international
factors sufficiently into consideration. Philippe C. Schmitter wrote
that one of the firmest conclusions of how transitions to democracy
take place was that they were largely to be explained in terms of
national forces and calculations and that external actors tended to
play an indirect and marginal role.1
Although no one would deny the fact that the key actors involved
in democratization may be overwhelmingly internal, their strategies
and calculations are strongly shaped by the pressure of externally
designed rules and structures. According to Laurence Whitehead, a
significant shift of international orientation, perhaps even of percep-
tions of national identity, is likely to accompany any major regime
change from authoritarian rule to liberal democracy.
The European Community has acted as a powerful catalyst both of
democratization and of national re-definition and modernization in
contemporary southern Europe, and this influence has been achieved
not through military occupations, but by offering economic and
social incentives for changes in group and national behaviour.2
This book will subscribe to this more recent interpretation of the
international factors of transitions to democracy, in order to determine
1