Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 May 2010
Introduction
Economically, Spain has been inextricably bound up with Europe since the early 1960s as the policy of economic self-sufficiency, autarky, gave way to liberalisation and the country began to trade more freely with the outside world (1.1.3). Politically, however, integration was long delayed. Spain's 1962 application to join the then European Economic Community (EEC) as an associate member was ignored by countries which found Franco's political regime unacceptable. The maximum to which the country could aspire – and that albeit with conditions that barely favoured Spain – was a preferential trade agreement signed in 1970. After the dictator's death, however, economic and political integration could follow parallel paths. Pending the outcome of the protracted negotiations on EC entry following the elections of the country's new democratic credentials were endorsed by her acceptance, as early as October into the Council of Europe (15.3.9.1). Membership of NATO, while not of course a purely European organisation, also conferred a degree of additional political respectability on Spain and gave her the opportunity to become involved in dialogue with her European neighbours, most of whom were also members. The major economic and foreign policy objective of successive Spanish governments, however, became reality when on 12 June 1985 King Juan Carlos signed the Treaty of Accession in Madrid, thus paving the way for Spanish entry into the European Community (EC) as from 1 January 1986. This date marks an important watershed in the political, economic, social and cultural evolution of Spain.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.