Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954, Western Europe and Canada, Volume VI, Part 2

711.56352/6–1654: Despatch

No. 920
The First Secretary of Embassy in Spain (Terry) to the Department of State

secret
No. 925

Madrid, June 16, 1954.

• Ref: CA–6501, May 11, 1954¹

• Subject: Implementation of Base Agreement and Related Matters

The following report was compiled from material prepared and submitted by JUSMG, MAAG and the Embassy. It is the understanding of the Embassy that more complete information on purely military topics is available to the Department through the lengthy Monthly Activities Reports which are submitted regularly to the Department of Defense by JUSMG, MAAG, the Director of Construction, and the Officer in Charge of Construction.

Summary

While the Base Program is still in the master planning stage, actual construction is anticipated to be undertaken at some sites about September of this year. Heavy construction machinery is beginning to arrive and representatives of the prime contractor have established offices in Madrid as have the BuDocks technicians charged with supervision of the construction program in Spain.

Although the basic agreements were signed on September 26, 1953 there remained a number of technical annexes yet to be worked out. For convenience, these are now being known as “Procedural Agreements”, and 4 have been concluded (Enclosures 1, 2, 3, and 4²); 9 are currently under discussion between the JUSMG and the High General Staff, with others in the process of preparation for negotiation.

Under the MDAP, of approximately $42.3 million dollars programmed for the Spanish Army to date, about $5 million dollars of matériel actually has been received. Modernization of a large number of units of the Spanish Navy is in the active planning stage; only token amounts of actual equipment and matériel have yet been received. The Air Force program has been sparked by the arrival of eight (8) T–33 jet fighter trainer aircraft. Every emphasis has been directed to training activities of all three branches of the Service.

Official visits to the U.S. by Lt. General Gallarza, Minister for Air, followed closely by a group of high Spanish Army Officers now touring U.S. military installations, are expected to contribute to a better understanding on the part of the Spanish military, of the complex problems involved in coordinating our mutual defense effort. Acceptance of U.S. guidance and suggestions in military matters appears uniformly satisfactory, and relations between U.S. and Spanish military at all echelons and in all Services is reported to be excellent. Broadly speaking, the attitude in Spain toward the United States has grown friendlier and more cooperative in the eight months since the Agreements were signed. The official Spanish thesis is that the Base Agreements with the U.S. constitute Spain’s contribution to Western defense. While the decision committing Spain to this action certainly must be considered an abandonment of the illusions of neutrality and at least a limited recognition of the principle of collective security, the Spanish Government has shown no inclination to accept the multilateral NATO defense concept.

[Here follows a seven-page discussion of detailed measures already undertaken in implementing the base agreement.]

(f) Development of Spanish Attitudes toward the United States and Western Defense:

1. Development of Spanish Attitide toward the U.S.

Since the agreements were signed, the Spanish attitude toward the United States, broadly speaking, has been more friendly and cooperative than at any time in recent years. This is certainly true in official circles, and particularly as regards those elements who stand directly to benefit from the accords: the armed services, and certain branches of the economy. However, while the average citizen is well-disposed in principle toward this pact with the most powerful nation of the West, there had been a general and of course ill-founded expectation that the Agreements would result in an immediate improvement in the difficult economic lot of the individual. That such a development has not occurred has produced some disillusionment and the feeling that U.S. aid is benefiting only the officials of the regime. The position of the Catholic hierarchy, confronted with the prospect of closer relations with a fundamentally liberal and religiously heterogeneous state, continues to be reserved. The Falange, while it now publicly supports the newly created Spanish–American understanding, does so with ill grace. On the other extreme, the reaction of the traditional, but not latent, political opposition to the Franco government—the Anarchists, Socialists, and Republicans—has been, insofar as the Embassy has been able to determine, predominantly adverse, since the U.S. Agreements represent for them, in the first instance, the strengthening of a regime to which they are unalterably opposed. With respect, finally, to the official governmental attitude, General Franco defined this authoritatively in his October 1, 1953 message to the Cortes, and has not deviated therefrom since: “If the Spanish nation, serving its own interests and those of Western defense, has undertaken …³ to cooperate closely with the United States, it has done so maintaining its own ideology intact and within its incorruptible sovereignty, thus inaugurating a policy of stable friendship between our two countries”.⁴ It goes without saying that for the regime the Agreements represent a signal triumph. Now, however, that the moment of signature, with the attendant fanfare of self-exaltation by the regime has passed into history and the period of putting the accords into effect has begun, the Spanish Government has made it clear that it is dissatisfied with one aspect of the Agreements—the amount of economic aid planned for the future. In general, nonetheless, a very favorable atmosphere towards the U.S. exists in Spain today.

2. Spanish Attitude toward Western Defense

It is the official Spanish thesis that the base agreement with the United States constitutes Spain’s contribution to Western defense. While this first major military alliance in its modern history represents a significant departure for Spain from its past isolationism an abandonment of any illusions of neutrality and a degree of recognition of the principle of collective security, the Spanish Government’s present concept of international cooperation remains limited to the strictly bilateral one of collaboration with the United States (and much less importantly, with the Portuguese under the Iberian Pact).

Although General Franco has frequently invoked the important role which Spain will now play in Western defense as a result of the U.S. Agreements, he has accorded no recognition to the fact that NATO is the primary instrument of this defense nor demonstrated any interest in progressing from this bilateralism to an acceptance of the multilateral defense concept inherent in NATO or the EDC. Questioned some months ago, for example, about the prospect of closer Spanish military and economic cooperation with France and Great Britain,^* Franco declared that Spain’s effective assistance to the West [“]is fully assured through the United States without forcing our people cold into relationships of intimacy …⁵ repugnant to the existing state of opinion”. The past eight months since this statement was made have indeed witnessed a marked intensification of the Spanish attitude of antagonism and hostility toward Great Britain (over Gibraltar) and France (over Morocco) and a corresponding deterioration in relations with these two countries. A corollary of this policy, however, has been a greatly increased emphasis on Spain’s overseas relations with Hispanic America and with the Arab World. Although it is believed that the real reason for Spain’s failure to demonstrate a greater readiness to participate effectively on cooperative Western European defense measures is her sincere lack of interest in doing so, the regime often publicly states that Spain sees no reason to force herself upon a community (Western Europe) whose members have in the past and continue in the present to demonstrate acute repugnance at the idea of close association with Franco Spain.

(g) Status of Annexes to Base Agreement Which Remain to be Negotiated:

With the signing of the Defense Agreements between Spain and the United States in September 1953, a cycle of further negotiation at service-to-service level has been initiated to cover points left uncovered in basic Agreements. It has been agreed between the Spanish High General Staff and JUSMG that agreements of this nature will be entitled “Procedural Agreements” and will follow in chronological sequence behind the Technical Schedules which are a part of the Agreements signed in September 1953. Four Procedural Agreements have been signed to date and copies have been furnished to your office.^† Additional Procedural Agreements which are being actively negotiated are listed below:

1. U.S. Naval ships visits

2. Identification cards for the use of U.S. personnel in Spain

3. Automobile licenses

4. Personal property customs procedures

5. Tax relief and reimbursement

6. Operation of military aircraft

7. Storage of USN POL

8. Storage of USN ammunition

9. Use of East Rota naval facility

Others are in process of preparation by the JUSMG staff.

(h) Special Agreements Not Mentioned Above:

1. Facilities Assistance Program

The Embassy concluded on May 19 negotiation of a document entitled “Proposed Bilateral Arrangements for Facilities Assistance Program”.⁶ The successful negotiation of this bilateral agreement permits Spain to receive equipment and machinery valued at $3,624,000. Spain for its part undertakes in separate special technical contracts to supply all required land, buildings, services, labor, mortar, bricks, etc., in a cooperative program which will augment the productive capacity of government-owned plants producing explosives and propellants in Murcia and Valladolid.

2. Offshore Procurement

On May 10 negotiations were initiated with the Spanish Foreign Office of a “Memorandum of Understanding” and a “Standard Clauses—Negotiated Contract for Offshore Procurement”.⁷ While Spain has in the past year been given opportunities to bid on a total of nearly $250 million dollars in offshore procurement contracts, there has been no formalized government-to-government understanding of the terms and conditions underlying such procurement. Spain has actually been awarded several contracts principally in the field of ordnance and is being considered for still additional awards at the present writing. Clauses are contained in these contracts however which will render them null and void unless the bilateral arrangements have been concluded by August 1, 1954. Reaction of the Spanish Government to the proposals has not yet been made known.

3. Aid to the Munitions Industry in Spain

Surveys of Spanish munitions plants, both public and private, point toward the urgent need for modernization of some of these plants to provide a more fully rounded ordnance base of production. Aid for a modernization program in 1955 will be requested for about $5,000,000.

The above report follows essentially the outline and topic form suggested in referenced airgram. Special reports are contemplated on some of the individual headings referred to only briefly in the report. These will be produced as rapidly as manpower and secretarial assistance can permit.

For the Chargé d’Affaires, a.i.:

Carroll M. Terry

1. Circular airgram 6501 instructed that a report describing the progress of the implementation of the 1953 agreements with Spain be submitted from Madrid. (711.56352/5–1154)
2. None printed; they were as follows: Procedural Agreement No. 5: Rules Governing the Importance of Matériel to be Used by U.S. Forces in Spain who are charged with the Execution of the Agreements Signed with the U.S. on 26 September 1953; Procedural Agreement No. 6: Drivers’ Licenses; Procedural Agreement No. 7: Communications-Electronics; Procedural Agreement No. 8: Customs Declaration for Official Courier Packages. For an account of the first four Technical Annexes, see Document 907.
3. Ellipsis in the source text.
4. A summary of the speech under reference is in despatch 260 from Madrid, Oct. 2, 1953. (752.00 (W)/10–253)
5. Special UP interview of November 4, 1953. [Footnote in the source text.]
5. Ellipsis in the source text.
6. Attached as enclosures to this despatch. [Footnote in the source text. See footnote 2 for a list of these documents.]
6. The text of the Facilities Assistance Agreement, which entered into force on May 19, 1954, is in 5 UST (pt. 3) 2377.
7. The text of the Offshore Procurement Program, signed July 30, 1954, is in 5 UST (pt. 3) 2328.