Book Review: Muñoz Sánchez, Antonio (2012), ‘El Amigo Alemán. El SPD y el Psoe de la dictad ura a la de mocracia’ Barcelona: RBA Libros, 512 pp., ISBN: 9788490062852 (p/bk), €25 Reviewed by Tobias Reckling, University of Portsmouth/Centre for European and International Studies Research E-mail:
[email protected]
This is an electronic version of the following book review: Muñoz Sánchez, Antonio (2012), ‘El Amigo Alemán. El SPD y el Psoe de la dictad ura a la de mocracia’, International Journal of Iberian Studies, 28:1, pp. 121-122. It is the form accepted for publication, not including editing that was done in the publisher’s production process. The final version of scientific record is available from the publisher’s website: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/intellect/ijis/2015/00000028/00000001/art00008
T
he importance of the international dimension for the understanding of the late Franco regime and the Spanish Transition to Democracy has been, although
considerably late, thoroughly recognized by historians. However, in current research this international dimension is still often limited to the analysis of Spain’s diplomatic relations. This shortcoming is rather surprising since historians like Charles Powell have early on also highlighted the crucial role of international non-state actors for the understanding of the Spanish Transition to Democracy. In particular, Powell stressed the importance of the financial, organizational and political support that the newly founded Spanish parties received from their European counterparts after the death of Franco in 1975. Apart from very few studies (Ortuño Anaya 2002; Kaiser and Salm 2009), however, this relationship has so far received surprisingly little attention from historians. Against this background, this book by Antonio Muñoz Sánchez on the relations between the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and also the syndicate IG Metall on the one side and the Spanish Socialists on the other from 1962 to 1977 must 1
be seen as a valuable attempt to fill this gap in current research. It is important to stress that Muñoz’s book is not limited to the Spanish transition, during which the support received from the German Social Democrats (and channelled through the SPD’s Friedrich Ebert Foundation) was as important for the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) as it was for the Spanish General Workers’ Union (UGT). Instead, it is Muñoz’s actual aim to track down the origins of this close relationship between the PSOE under Felipe González and the amigo alemán. One of his central questions is therefore how this obviously asymmetric relationship between the most powerful social-democratic party of its time, the SPD, and the small and fractured Spanish PSOE during the Franco dictatorship developed throughout the 1960s and 1970s. This study is therefore most original. Muñoz demonstrates, based on thorough research in various German and Spanish archives, the changing attitudes of the SPD towards the ‘Spanish question’ since the beginning of the 1960s and the resulting and partially conflicting relations with the Spanish socialists. Muñoz argues that, following the break with Marxist ideology at the end of the 1950s, the SPD took a rather pragmatic stance towards the Franco regime throughout the 1960s, which developed under the chancellorship of Willy Brandt (1969–1974) into a policy that was, in Muñoz’s opinion, quite like the German new Ostpolitik at the time. Rather than open condemnation of the Franco regime, together with its isolation, the SPD aimed for a ‘change by rapprochement’ within the context of the EEC. At the same time, Muñoz also argues that the exiled Spanish socialist leaders hardly made use of the potential support by their resourceful German comrades – partly due to their contrasting attitude towards the Franco regime, and partly out of fear of losing control over any externally supported socialist organizations within Spain. This only changed during the 1970s and following the complicated ‘reformation’ of the PSOE. While the consequent division of the PSOE initially turned the SPD somewhat away from Spain, Muñoz shows how the experience of the Portuguese revolution resulted for the SPD in the search for a reliable partner in Spain in order to support a stable Transition to Democracy and establish a strong socialist counterbalance to the wellorganized Spanish Communist Party (PCE). It was only after this privileged partner was found in the PSOE under the young Felipe González that the remarkably close relationship between the Spanish Socialists and the SPD during the transition took off. Muñoz leaves no doubt that the support by the SPD, both financially and 2
politically by promoting González also outside of Spain, was thereafter crucial for the surprising re-emergence of the PSOE as by far the most powerful party on the political left. In this valuable study, Muñoz provides an in-depth and thoroughly researched account of the relationship between the PSOE and the German social democrats. Moreover, by focusing on these non-state actors, his research also provides new insights into the international dimension of late Francoism and the Spanish transition, as well as into the bilateral relations between Spain and Germany. References Kaiser, W. and Salm, C. (2009), ‘Transition und Europäisierung in Spanien und Portugal. Sozial- und christdemokratische Netzwerke im Übergang von der Diktatur zur parlamentarischen Demokratie’/‘Transition and Europeanization in Spain and Portugal. Social and Christian Democratic Networks in the Move from Dictatorship to Parliamentary Democracy’, Archiv für Sozialgeschichte, 49, pp. 259–82. Ortuño Anaya, P. (2002), European Socialists and Spain. The Transition to Democracy, 1959–77, New York: Palgrave. Powell, C. T. (2001), ‘International aspects of democratization. The case of Spain’, in L. Whitehead (ed.), The International Dimensions of Democratization. Europe and the Americas: Europe and the Americas, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 285–315.
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