Report, Central Intelligence Agency, An Interpretive Account of Recent Spanish History, Supplement to SR-11 (Spain)

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ready to supply him with a new prop. With the approval of the Primate, Martin Artajo entered Franco's cabinet as Foreign Minister in July 1945. In September, the Primate issued a pastoral letter defending the legitimacy of the Franco regime and all its works. In preparation for the day of Franco's fall, the exiles sub- merged their controversies to the extent of reconstituting the machinery of Republican Government in the late summer of 1945. A formula saved the face of Dr. Negrin, who formally resigned as Premier after it had been agreed in Mexico that Martinez Barrio should be elected President of the Republic. Proceeding as closely as possible along constitutional lines, Martinez Barrio consulted representatives of the various leftist parties, and then appointed a Left Republican ex-Premier, José Giral, to constitute a Government. Giral's coali- tion cabinet presented its program, which was approved, to a trun- cated meeting of the 1936 Cortes convened in Mexico City in November 1945. This was the first meeting of the Cortes since the deputies fled from Spain in 1939. The tone of the new Government was strongly anti-Communist, reflecting the majority feeling among the exiles and also designed to obtain Anglo-American sympathy. Despite this, no major power considered that Giral's Government-in-exile had suffi- cient backing from the Spanish people to be of serious consequence. The argument of the exiles that the Republic had been the first victim -56-