Cold War (im)mobilities and Spanish (in)security. Czech and Slovak anti-communist exiles in Francoist Madrid
Abstract
At the end of WWII, Madrid began to change into a hub and a meeting point for anti-communist and rightist emigrants - the Spanish capital became a place to live, hide, study or work for these, (mostly) Eastern European, exiles. Subsequently, with the outbreak of the Cold War and the emergence of the bipolar system, Francoist Spain decided, in order to end its international isolation and to secure the survival of the regime, to capitalise on the presence of these emigrants and their common anti-communism and Catholicism.
The mutually beneficial relationship between Franco, who opened doors to these exiles and thus presented himself as an executor of Truman's doctrine of containment through his "anti-communist crusade" and these exiles, who found refuge in National-Catholic Spain, ensured the tolerance of the existence of Franco's regime by Western powers. This contribution conceptually stems from the "new mobilities paradigm", which understands mobilities as existing in complex systems, which include not only mobility but also "its other face" - immobility.
With a focus on the Cold War (im)mobilities of Slovak and Czech anti-communist exiles, I argue that the mobility of these groups into Spain had a (re)productive character, as it led (through various fixities and infrastructures) to another (im)mobility. The activities and networks of these emigrants in Madrid, which included exile organisations, radio broadcasts in foreign languages or academic publications (immobile nodes and structures), enabled their future mobility outside of Spain, due to the difficult economic conditions in the country, as well as the changing international situation since the late 1950s.
It was at this time when in the spirit of Khrushchev's Thaw and after being left outside of the EEC, Spain decided to strengthen its economic relations with the Eastern Bloc and in parallel gradually ceased its support for the Eastern European refugees. Furthermore, the fruitful activities and infrastructures of these anti-communist exile groups prove that the Cold War was an era full of transborder connections and contacts even between small(er) actors.
The example of the Slovak and Czechoslovak exile organisations, who were regularly, although unsuccessfully, proposing to Spanish authorities to push their agenda on the floor of international organisations and thus trying to change the direction of Madrid's foreign policy towards Czechoslovakia, only confirms this thesis.