Abstract
On the eve of the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution, the Spanish government le European efforts to bring the Cuban authorities and society in a more cooperative mood in an effort to influence their evolution toward a political transition. This explicit obsession stands in clear contrast to the steady and stubborn policy of the United States, whose objective in encountering the Cuban government is to provoke its demise. Nonetheless, Cuba’s search for survival has also been facing in recent times the opposition or ambivalence of other European states that are skeptical about the possibility for rapprochement.
The most beautiful land that human eyes ever saw
Christopher Columbus, 1492, off the coast of Cuba
The ever faithful island
Official label for Cuba in royal coat of arms
Until the last man and the last peseta
Antonio Cánovas del Castillo, Prime Minister of Spain, 1988
More was lost in Cuba
Spanish popular saying, ca. 1900
With Cuba, anything, except breaking up
Generalissimo Francisco Franco, 1960
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Notes
For a review of Spain’s foreign relations under Franco, see the following classic books: José Mario Armero, La política exterior de Franco (Barcelona: Planeta, 1978);
Ángel Viñas, Los pactos secretos de Franco con Estados Unidos (Barcelona: Grijalbo, 1981);
James Cortada, Spain in the Twentieth-Century World (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1980);
Fernando Morán, Una política exterior para España (Barcelona: Planeta, 1988);
and Roberto Mesa, Democracia y política exterior en España (Madrid: Ediciones Universidad Complutense, 1988).
For an early sample of books on Cuba’s international relations, see the review essay by Jorge Domínguez, “Cuba in the International Arena,” Latin American Research Review, vol. 23, no. 1, 1988, pp. 196–206.
For a review of Spanish-Cuban relations, see, from a British perspective: Alistair Hennessy, “Spain and Cuba: An Enduring Relationship,” in H. J. Wiarda (ed.), The Lberian-Latin American Connection. Implications for U.S. Foreign Policy (Boulder, CO: Westview Press/American Enterprise Institute, 1986), pp. 360–374.
See John Kirk, José Martí: Mentor of the Cuban Nation (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1983).
Manuel Moreno Fraginals, Cuba/España, España/Cuba: historia común (Barcelona: Grijalbo, 1995), pp. 278–292.
Joseph Nye, Sofi Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (New York: Public Affairs, 2005).
See the following works by Manuel de Paz-Sánchez: Zona Rebelde: La diplomacia española ante la Revolución Cubana (1957–1960) (Tenerife: Centro de la Cultura Popular Canaria, 1997), pp. 301–317; “Franco y Cuba,” paper presented at a symposium organized by the University of Nantes, December 7–9, 2006; and Franco y Cuba: Estudios sobre España y la Revolución (Tenerife: Idea, 2006), cap. 5, pp. 187–300, and cap. 6, pp. 301–375; Suite para dos épocas: La caída de Batista y el triunfo de la Revolución Cubana, según la diplomacia española (París: L’Harmattan, 1997).
See context in the book of memoirs written by the cousin of Francisco Franco, Salgado-Araujo, Mis conversaciones privadas con Franco (Barcelona: Planeta, 1976), pp. 278–279.
Ignacio Ramonet, Fidel Castro: Biografía a dos voces (Madrid: Debate, 2006).
George Lambie, “Franco’s Spain and the Cuban Revolution,” in Alistair Hennessey and George Lambie (eds.), The Fractured Blockade: West European-Cuban Relations During the Revolution (London: Macmillan, 1993), p. 253.
Georgie Anne Geyer, Guerrilla Prince (Mexico: Kosmos, 1991);
De Paz-Sanchez, Franco y Cuba (Spain: Ediciones Idea, 2006).
Frei Betto, Fidel y la religión (Santo Domingo, R. Dominicana: Editorial Alfa y Omega, 1985), p. 144.
Tad Szulc, Fidel: Un retrato crítico (Barcelona: Grijalbo, 1986).
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© 2009 Joaquín Roy
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Roy, J. (2009). Spain and Cuba. In: The Cuban Revolution (1959–2009). Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230101364_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230101364_1
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