811.911/402
The American Ambassador in Spain (Hayes) to the Spanish Minister for Foreign Affairs (Jordana)20
Excellency: I have the honor to refer to recent personal communications exchanged between us and to a conversation which we had on June 7 during which you informed me that steps had been taken to ensure that the government-controlled Spanish press would adopt an attitude of impartiality as between belligerents in the present war. Subsequent to our conversation, Señor Arias Salgado, Vice Secretary of Popular Education, informed the Press Attaché of this Embassy in a similar sense.
I noted with considerable gratification that just prior to our conversation and for several days subsequent to it there was, in fact, a noticeable improvement in the attitude of the Spanish press, that headlines were more fair and that a larger percentage of news from United Nations sources was published in the principal newspapers. I was particularly glad to be able to inform my Government accordingly.
I have noted with regret, however, that this tendency has since been reversed and that the Spanish press has now reverted to its older tendency to give preference to news from Axis sources and to present news from United Nations sources in the least favorable manner possible. Reports of this retrogression in the attitude of the Spanish press have reached me from all parts of Spain. I am informed that in the Barcelona area, for example, the attitude of the press is now worse than at any time subsequent to the landing of United Nations forces in North Africa. The latest retrogression in the attitude of the local press coincides, I am informed, with a visit to Barcelona of Señor Aparicio, National Delegate of Press and Propaganda.
During our conversation referred to, Your Excellency invited me to supply you with examples of unfair presentation of United Nations news. I am refraining from submitting examples at this time because they are contained in great numbers in any recent issue of the Spanish press which Your Excellency may care to examine. Merely by way of illustration, I refer you to the strongly pro-Axis slant of headlines and news on the first page of the Madrid Ya for Sunday, June 20, in such marked contrast to the impartiality which the same newspaper was obviously attempting to exhibit two weeks previously. [Page 610] It would be too great a burden on the Embassy to collect and deliver to you the many and still more glaring examples of the current pro-Axis attitude of the Spanish press as a whole.
I am constrained to inform Your Excellency with the greatest seriousness that this widespread and obviously inspired retrogression in the attitude of the Spanish press gravely menaces the good relations between the United States and Spain which Your Excellency and I are endeavoring to foster. Unfortunately I am now obliged to report to my Government not only the newly intensified pro-Axis attitude of the press, deriving from the pro-Axis attitude of the Spanish censorship, but also its coinciding with greatly increased activity of the Press Attaché and other officials of the German Embassy.
The failure of the Spanish Government to carry out its commitment to ensure that the government-controlled Spanish press will indeed adopt an impartial attitude must necessarily raise doubt in America as to (1) the Spanish Government’s sincerity in making the commitment, or (2) the Spanish Government’s ability to control pro-Axis elements within the Spanish Government itself, which to date have been able to maintain or reassert the unneutral attitude of the Spanish press against which I have protested over a period of many months. If the Spanish Government, in effect, is unable to control the activities of these pro-Axis elements, my Government will of necessity be compelled to re-examine its attitude towards Spain, which is based on the Spanish Government’s commitment to follow a policy of neutrality consistent with the treatment being given to Spain by my Government.
I should like to take this opportunity, too, to refer to my Note No. 1006 of June 1, 1943, protesting against the impediments placed in the way of the distribution of informational material by American agencies in Spain by Spanish Government agents. Reports from different areas in Spain, particularly from Seville, reveal that persons found with American informational material in their possession are being arrested and fined. These persons include employees of American Consulates. I request that the Spanish Government bear in mind that these Consulates are performing services which are valuable and indeed necessary to the conduct of economic and other relations between Spain and the United States, and that if the Spanish Government desires that these services be continued it should arrange for the police and its other officials to show to these Consuls and their staffs the consideration and the cooperation they are entitled to receive from officials of a friendly government.
I avail myself [etc.]
- Copy transmitted to the Department by the Ambassador in his despatch No. 1030, June 24; received July 5.↩