In the vanguard of Franco’s Spain: Ambassador Areilza and the US (1954-1960)

Before becoming Minister of Foreign Affairs in the first government formed under the restored Spanish monarchy (1975-1976) and before he became an enthusiastic supporter of liberal democracy and European integration, José María de Areilza, count of Motrico (1909-1998), rendered great services to the Franco regime in his capacity of ambassador to Argentina (1947-1950), the United States (1954-1960) and France (1960-1964). As ambassador to Washington during most of the Eisenhower presidency, he struggled to fully develop the Madrid Pact of 1953 and to increase American military and economic aid to a needy and still very much isolated and authoritarian Spain.

This talk will not only assess his performance as Spain’s top diplomatic agent in the US at the height of the Cold War and his contribution to the fulfillment of Spain’s foreign policy goals, but will also focus on Areilza’s increasingly tense relationship with Spanish officials in Madrid and the ideological evolution he underwent in the six years spent at Washington D.C.

Speaker: Pablo Guerrero, Visiting Fellow at Harvard’s University History Department, is a PhD candidate at the CEU San Pablo University and a Professor of History at the Francisco de Vitoria University.