Franco Spain After the Sputnik

...An analysis of how this shift has affected the actions of two dictators lately considered U.S...

...American propaganda took another beating when the Spanish papers used photographs of U.S...

...I say that what has effective value is political unity, continuity, authority and discipline...

...it was bound to happen in the new Russia...

...What gave it special significance was that, by the very nature of the Franco regime, it could not have been published without official sanction...

...Direct trade relations with Poland are a fact...

...Spain is negotiating a $25-million deal with East Germany...

...The impact on Spanish official thinking of the Soviet sputnik may be gauged by the following occurrences: • On October 7, three days after the Russians successfully rocketed Sputnik I into space, Franco made a speech in which he took the unprecedented step of drawing a parallel between the Soviet system and his own in order to demonstrate that it is authoritarian regimes based on "discipline and order" that get places...

...For the first time under Franco, Moscow's Pravda hit the streets of Madrid—in the form of a reproduction in the Spanish papers of the Communist organ's front page with news about the sputnik...

...Whether we like it or not, this could not have happened in countries which are divided and without order...

...He said: "We cannot ignore the political importance of the fact that a nation has suceeded in launching the first artificial satellite...

...Never before had the press been allowed such freedom to play up things Russian...

...A long-term possibility is thai, if the United States fails to catch up with the Russians in the rocket race, Spain will wish to scrap the American alliance and revert to neutrality...

...Franco Spain After the Sputnik By Richard Scott Mowrer Madrid General Francisco Franco's right-wing authoritarian regime is calling off its cold war with Communist Russia...

...Against these post-sputnik manifestations of diminishing hostility toward the Soviet bloc it must be recorded that the Franco regime's abhorrence of the Communist ideology remains, and with it a profound dread of Soviet power...

...In the same "sputnik speech," General Franco declared : "It is said, and I believe this to be true, that when Truman informed his allies at Potsdam of [America's] possession of the atom bomb which was to be dropped on Japan, Stalin struck the table with his fist and said: 'If you had it, why did you let Russia bleed herself with offensives...

...This could not have happened in the old Russia...

...Doubtless the criticism was merited...

...Nothing sensational emerged from the meeting, but it was obvious that the reporters of Madrid's strait jacketed press enjoyed the novel experience of interviewing Red Russians...

...We must not let ourselves be blinded by passion...

...Spanish negotiators are in contact with Czech Government officials...

...It would be a good idea for the Americans to learn the lesson the Russians have just given them and in future to abolish their system of sensationalist propaganda and not sell the fur of the bear until they have caught it...

...allies, Spain's Franco and Yugoslavia's Tito, is presented in the two disturbing reports which follow by Richard Scott Mowrer and Hugh Seton-Watson...

...This has been accentuated, of course, by the impression registered when Soviet scientists launched Sputniks I and II...

...The achievement of great exploits requires political unity and discipline...

...We must distinguish between what is evil and what has real and effective value...

...satellite models, furnished weeks previously by the U.S...

...It was touched off by General Franco himself and taken up by the Government-controlled press...

...At the same time, American prestige here is sagging badly...

...The Caudillo's words evidently astonished the censorship department: 24 hours passed before the speech was cleared for publication in the nation's press...

...When Stalin died in 1953, Spanish papers were prevented from publishing his picture or that of any top Russian of the moment...

...Spanish papers were also allowed to publish Soviet diagrams of the satellite rockets, complete with the explanations in Russian...

...This unparalleled tribute to the Soviet Union was followed by what diplomats here regard as a deliberate slap at the United States...

...For the first time in the Franco era, a press conference was organized in Madrid featuring Soviet citizens, in this instance the Soviet scientists who had attended the International Geophysical Year space travel congress in Barcelona...

...On the same day, the newspaper Hoja del Lunes came out with the most biting criticism of the United States to pass censorship since the signing of the Spanish-American alliance in 1953: "The launching of the first satellite by the Soviet Union represents a serious loss of prestige for the United States, which, after undertaking a fabulous propaganda campaign announcing how it would launch its satellite next spring, has been beaten by the scientists of Russia...

...But also to be considered is what Franco adherents refer to as "diplomatic realism...

...There had been a behind-the-scenes tendency in this direction for some time, but since the launching of the Soviet satellites the trend has become more pronounced...

...Information Service, to illustrate the Russian achievement...

...The Ambassadors of Communist Poland and Czechoslovakia were also present...

...A shower of criticism of the United States, the sharpest since the pre-alliance days, followed in the wake of Sputniks I and II...

...On October 12 in Washington, Spanish Ambassador Jose Maria de Areilza gave a Columbus Day reception to which Soviet diplomats were invited for the first time...

...I demand that you reveal to me all your technical achievements in this field.' So, with that ingenuousness and innocence for which history will doubtless hold them accountable, the Americans revealed to the Russians the secrets of atomic energy and the results of research done in the United States...