The Prieto–Gil-Robles Meeting of October 1947: Britain and the Failure of the Spanish anti-Franco Coalition, 1945–50

Abstract

In 1947 the British government departed from its policy of non-intervention in Spanish affairs and actively encouraged the formation of a united anti-Franco opposition front. By then Britain’s post-war accommodation of the Franco regime, reflecting its strategic and commercial interests in the Iberian Peninsula, was challenged by international interest in the ‘Spanish question’, culminating in the 1946 UN Resolution recommending the withdrawal of ambassadors from Madrid. Also by then, the socialist, Indalecio Prieto, and the right-wing clericalist, José María Gil-Robles, leaders respectively of the exiled republican and monarchist oppositions, had assumed control of a strategy of republican-monarchist reconciliation, initiated in 1944 by the interior Spanish opposition, in the hope of attracting the support of the western democracies. By arranging the London republican–monarchist talks of 1947, the British Foreign Office appeared to respond to this hope but in reality it used the talks to provide evidence of progress towards the democratization of Spain in order to preempt further UN sanctions against Spain. As the UN threat to British Iberian interests diminished, however, with the onset of the Cold War, British support for the Spanish opposition evaporated and the latter’s united anti-Franco front strategy collapsed.