881.00/1772: Telegram
The Ambassador in Spain (Weddell) to the Secretary of State
[Received 10:32 p.m.]
613. I today called on the Foreign Minister at his request. He said he wished to tell me of Spain’s attitude and the motive inspiring its recent action in the matter of Tangier whose former political status was in his opinion a “legal fiction and a monstrosity”; he remarked that in the first place the world existing at the time of its creation and the world of today were entirely different parts of speech, that Spain’s relation to Tangier and nearby territory was allied to a natural right and that Spain’s recent action although an isolated act as regards the general international situation had, however, a close relation thereto in its timing.
The Minister pointed out that the defeat of France had effaced that country from the picture as regards Tangier and declared that this was equally the case with certain other signatories of the instruments creating the international zone for example with Holland; that France had occupied in the administration an importance to which it had no real rights; that with France eliminated Spain’s real rival was Italy and that very frankly Spain had profited by Italy’s preoccupation in various directions to take the step of which the world was informed. Spain’s action he desired to re-emphasize was the assertion of the natural right which Spain had to this territory.
With regard to the three major powers having interests under the instruments creating the administration and status of the zone the [Page 788] Minister said that Great Britain had not exactly “protested” Spain’s action; France had formally done so but that, very confidentially, the stiffest protest had come from Italy.
I told the Minister that we would naturally wish to conserve our rights and privileges in Tangier and that I was reporting his comment to my Government for such instructions as it might consider appropriate.
Repeated to Tangier.