Spain and the United States - Real Instituto Elcano

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SPAIN AND THE UNITED STATES
attitude of the right, in particular Catholic fundamentalists, parts of the
army and the Falangistas, made the United States not very popular
among Spaniards after Franco died in 1975.
The most difficult part to negotiate were not the conditions under which
the United States would be allowed to activate or put in a state of alert the bases
and military facilities in the event of an armed conflict (which remained
a secret until 1979), but the accompanying economic assistance.
Unsurprisingly, given the economy’s parlous state, Franco was hard to satisfy
when it came to money.
Franco was very accommodating over the activation clause (Spain merely
had to be informed of the undefined “evident Communist aggression which
threatens the security of the West”), although in order to save face and claim
no loss of sovereignty it was kept out of the public domain. The bases were put
on a state of alert because of the 1958 Lebanon crisis, the evacuation of the
Congo in 1964 and Libya in 1969, hardly acts of “Communist aggression” and
“threats to the security of the West.”
The agreements enabled the United States to introduce nuclear weapons
into Spain (Rota had Polaris submarines after 1963) and to carry out flights
over Spanish territory with nuclear weaponry. This became a sensitive issue
after the infamous Palomares incident in 1966, when a collision between two
US planes led to the dropping of four H-bombs, one of which landed in the
Mediterranean. However, despite the public outcry (muted in Spain because of
a shackled press), Article VII of the technical (and secret) agreement – which
gave the US forces total freedom to move inside Spanish territory, territorial
waters and air space – was not modified until 1970.
The bases agreement went through seven rounds of negotiations between
1953 and 2001, four during the dictatorship and three during the post-Franco
democracy. There were ups and downs during the negotiating processes and
brinkmanship on both sides. In 1963, for example, Spain threatened not to
renew the agreements unless the conditions set by the Americans were
improved considerably. Washington knew this was a bluff and did not give in.
Five years later, at the height of the Vietnam war, Henry Kissinger, head of the
National Security Council, threatened to cancel the agreements. The domestic
mood in the United States had turned against military commitments abroad.
Madrid rapidly reduced its request for military aid from $1 billion to $300
million and finally to $50 million worth of military aid and $25 million of
credits, and agreed to locate the 401 Tactical Fighter Wing at Torrejón after US
missiles were withdrawn from Turkey following the Cuban missile crisis. The
terms of the agreement remained essentially the same until the second
negotiation in 1986-88, when the Socialists put their foot down and demanded