Francoist Diplomacy in the United States During the Spanish Civil War 1936–1939: On the Question of the Status of the Francoist Representative to the United States Juan Francisco de Cardenas

Abstract

Almost two months after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, the leader of the insurgents Generalissimo Francisco Franco proclaimed himself the head of Spain on 1 October 1936 and immediately began to deal with its internal structure and with establishing ties with other countries to gain recognition by ideologically close states as Italy and Germany, but also by Western democracies, in particular the United States. To this end, Juan Francisco de Cardenas, an experienced diplomat, went to New York at the end of August 1936. In 1937–1938, he tried to get the government of Francisco Franco recognised and obtain the status of a Francoist agent in the USA. The fact that the United States did not recognise de Cárdenas de jure as Franco's agent in New York, did not name him consul and banned the official seal and the Francoist flag as an attribute of statehood on its territory, indicated that the US did not regard the Franco government as a legitimate one. The Americans maintained formal diplomatic relations with the leadership of Republican Spain until 1 April 1939, viewing it as the only legitimate Spanish government. Nevertheless, with the US State Department's knowledge, de Cardenas was in fact able to provide almost all consular services, which to a certain extent indicated the duality of US policy. In this article the author, for the first time in Russian scholarly literature, studied the materials of the Spanish General Archive of Administration (Alcala de Henares, Spain) where the incoming and outgoing correspondence of Juan Francisco de Cardenas and other Francoist politicians for 1936–1939 is stored.