It was not an oil raft. Many did not know what they were going for. Others came suspicious. From there, a teleological thread did not emerge, which linked with the opening of a transition stage from dictatorship to democracy as of 1976. And yet, for sixty years, with ambiguities, with resignations, with external aid, 118 Spanish politicians and intellectuals put democratic and pro-European values ??ahead of their particular interests.
It is not a small thing. And this is not just a Spanish story, but a European one. On June 7 and 8, 1962, the IV Congress of the European Movement was held in Munich to discuss the democratization of European institutions. The anti-Francoist Spaniards were invited, previously and on the sidelines, to discuss what requirements Spain would have to meet to integrate into Europe. A path that Francoism intended to follow in the economic plan, but without losing political power.
The Spanish delegation of the Movement, chaired by the former Republican diplomat Salvador de Madariaga, with the collaboration of the former Poumist leaders Julián Gorkin and Enric Adroher; the general secretary of the PSOE, Rodolfo Llopis, and the leaders of the PNV Manuel de Irujo and the ERC, Carles Pi i Sunyer, gathered in the Bavarian capital 80 anti-Francoists from the interior and 38 from exile, from Social Democrats, Monarchists, Christian Democrats, Liberals , Republicans, Catalanists and Basque nationalists to Catholic trade unionists.
Some met again after years, others met there. It was not an initial meeting between exile and interior. Both had been dealing with each other for years, with difficulties. It wasn’t easy either. There were those who refused the greeting. Robert van Schendel was key to reaching an understanding. The Secretary General of the European Movement mediated between groups. Two commissions were organized, separated by discrepancies between interior and exile.
The exiles wanted a plebiscite (monarchy or republic) to determine the regime that would replace the Franco regime. Those from the interior, Dionisio Ridruejo among them, endorsed the monarchy due to the negative image of the Republican era and for fear that a referendum would reopen the wounds of the Civil War. The final resolution spoke only of the “establishment of authentically representative and democratic institutions.”
José María Gil-Robles threatened to leave if Valencia and the Balearic Islands were accepted as part of a “Catalan nationality” or that Catalonia, Euskadi and Galicia were recognized as nations. In the agreement they were defined as “natural communities”.
Socialists and Republicans fought each other. The Communist Party of Spain was not invited. The context of the cold war weighed. Also the own position of the PCE, enemy of that new Europe. However, he sent two observers and a month later he adhered to the adopted resolution, approved by acclamation on the 6th.
Despite the setbacks, the European institutions understood that accepting the regime within their midst would have disastrous consequences for them. They were convinced by the furious Francoist response, which branded the meeting a “collusion” and which imprisoned or deported some participants and prevented the return of others.
The repression publicized the meeting even more and left Franco’s Spain without the possibility of joining the EEC. And it is that Franco was afraid that spring, perhaps for the first time, because while he was striving to make the tear caused by the Civil War permanent, a hundred figures from both sides and a new generation had gone to Munich to overcome it.
