The "Spanish Question" at the UN and the Cold War

Abstract

On completing thirty years since the end of the Cold War, the article provides a new approach to how the international conflict fostered the permanence of the Francoist dictatorship. In the context of the crisis between the United States and USSR, the article raises other questions that had a decisive bearing on the behaviour of the member states of the UN regarding the Spanish question. These include the lack of a convincing model for political transition for the democracies: the pressure caused on both the internal and external politics between the states, and the exploitation at the Security Conseil of the Spanish question within an unstable political conjuncture. Furthermore, it describes in detail and analyses the conduct and political strategies of the exiled Republican government and the behaviour and evolution of the anti-Francoist opposition towards positions closer to an understanding with the monarchy for an agreed transition. It highlights the activity undertaken by both the Catalan and Basque governments and to what extent the conflicts in the Mediterranean, the debate about atomic energy and the Marshall Plan had an influence on the Spanish case, within the framework of a bipolarised world.