Britain and the Spanish anti-Franco opposition, 1940-1950

the long version

"This book examines the reasons for the British government's failure to cooperate with Franco's Spanish opponents during and immediately after the Second World War. Divisions in the Spanish opposition were one factor and a close study, based on British and Spanish archives and secondary works, follows attempts throughout this period to establish an anti-Franco front. However, without a guarantee of a peaceful transition to democracy the British government kept the opposition at arm's length in order to protect its strategic and commercial interests in Franco Spain. Only when international pressure for sanctions threatened those interests in 1947 did the Foreign Office briefly sponsor opposition talks in London. With the coming of the Cold War, British interest in the Spanish opposition ended. Foreign Office archives on the Spanish opposition clearly demonstrate that, whatever its pretension to an ethical foreign policy, it was never British policy to eject the Franco regime from the postwar order."--BOOK JACKET.