Relations between Cuba and Spain have long been complex and important to both. The good relations that would develop between the governments of Francisco Franco and Fidel Castro met that standard but, seen from the early 1960s, might also have seemed improbable. This book assesses the most contentious period in Spanish-Cuban relations after the Cuban revolutionary victory in 1959. It ranges from Cuba’s expulsion of the Spanish ambassador, Juan Pablo de Lojendio, in late January 1960 until the end of 1962, after the missile crisis. (In 1963, Spanish-Cuban relations would improve significantly; in the new three-year trade treaty, Spain agreed to pay a price for Cuban sugar well above the Soviet and prevailing world market prices.)
Spanish-Cuban relations in the early 1960s operated at multiple levels. Relations between the two political regimes were poor. Franco had been an ally of Mussolini and Hitler; his government remained strongly anticommunist. Many Spanish...
