Spain’s Contribution to West European Economic Relief and [Early Phase of] Reconstruction

Abstract

Relief and reconstruction needs during the period immediately after World War II caused West European powers to lay aside their distaste for the Franco regime. The Spanish administration’s wide room for manoeuvre in trade relations contrasted with its poor international political position during the first two years after the war. The political discrimination and ostracism that Spain suffered immediately after May 1945 due to the origins and nature of its political regime, were not accompanied by an equal rebuff in economic relations. This was mostly due to the contribution the Spanish economy made to the relief and reconstruction of West European economies in the period of demobilization and abrupt conversion from war to peace-time production. Relief relates to the supply of goods in the form of alternatives to the decline in European production. Reconstruction, however, is neither limited to repairing war dislocations and damage nor to the restoration of capital equip­ment but implies transforming the European economies through structural economic rationalization and modernization. This chapter will refer to the early phase of reconstruction which took place as a result of separate, often conflicting, national policies. From the summer of 1945 to the spring of 1947 relief and, most especially, reconstruction efforts were so vast that any con­tribution to ease its path was welcome, despite ideological considerations as to the political regime ruling over countries of supply. This is the sense of the formula trade versus political discrimination that introduces the first part of this book.’