852.00/8–545: Telegram
The Ambassador in Spain (Armour) to the Secretary of State
[Received August 5—4:46 p.m.]
SS 9. I have today received from the Foreign Affairs Office a note verbale translated below.
“The Ministry Foreign Affairs presents its compliments to the Embassy of the United States of America and has the honor to inform it that the Spanish Government has decided to make public the following note:
In the face of the extraordinary reference to Spain which is contained in the communiqué of ‘The Three’ at Potsdam25 the Spanish State rejects as arbitrary and unjust those concepts which refer to it and considers them the result of the false atmosphere created by the slanderous campaigns of the expatriated Reds and their like abroad.
Spain, following the policy of discretion and goodwill which she had fixed for herself in the face of the errors of others which would not directly affect her, did not wish to set forth her reserves in respect to the agreements at the Conference of San Francisco, reached in the absence of almost all the European countries; but on being today so unjustly referred to, she finds herself obliged to declare that she neither begs for a place at international conferences nor would she accept one which was not in relation to her history, her population and her services to peace and culture.
Similar reasons one day led her to abandon under the Monarchical regime the former League of Nations.
Spain once again proclaims her peaceful spirit, her goodwill toward all peoples and is confident that once those passions are quieted which the war and propaganda exacerbated, the excess of this hour will be revised and from within or without she will continue to collaborate in the work of peace for which the fact of her having remained neutral, free and independent in the two greatest and most terrible wars recorded by history constitutes an outstanding credential. San Sebastian, August 4.”
Repeated to London, Paris and Madrid by courier.
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For communiqué of August 2, 1945, see Foreign Relations, The Conference of Berlin (The Potsdam Conference), 1945, vol. ii, p. 1499. The statement referred to here is the last paragraph of section X, “Conclusion of Peace Treaties and Admission to the United Nations Organization”, p. 1509. This paragraph reads:
↩“The three Governments feel bound however to make it clear that they for their part would not favor any application for membership put forward by the present Spanish Government, which, having been founded with the support of the Axis Powers, does not, in view of its origins, its nature, its record and its close association with the aggressor States, possess the qualifications necessary to justify such membership.”