‘Our Spanish Brothers’ or ‘As at Plombieres’? France, The Legacy of Resistance and the Spanish Opposition to Franco, 1945–1948

Abstract

The case of French relations with the semi-Fascist regime of General Francisco Franco of Spain after the Second World War offers historians the opportunity to explore various influences on French foreign policy. This article examines France’s official policies towards the Spanish anti-Franco opposition as an example of the impact that the legacy of the Resistance had on postwar foreign affairs. Yet the French Foreign Ministry only reluctantly embraced the Resistance vision of universal republicanism in Europe. Rather, the importance of keeping French policy in line with that of the Western Alliance consistently shaped policy towards various Spanish groups. The result was a significant Franco-American-British effort to unite the anti-Franco opposition in Spain 1945–1948 but one that was easily abandoned once it proved impracticable. Resistance ideas of a renewed foreign policy following liberation were thus limited by the importance the government attributed to alliance politics in the emerging Cold War atmosphere.