Revisiting Transnational Broadcasting by Nelson Ribeiro Stephanie Seul

Author:Nelson Ribeiro, Stephanie Seul [Nelson Ribeiro, Stephanie Seul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780367029432
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2019-01-08T00:00:00+00:00

The Spanish Service, an Obstacle to Appeasement?

In 1942, after the USA had entered the war and Germany had suffered the first defeats in Russia, Spanish foreign policy became completely erratic. On the one hand, Franco appeared to become more convinced that the course of the war was inclined in favour of the Allies, while the Falange with Serrano Súñer at the head radicalised their speeches and perpetrated more and more violent attacks against British interests in Spain. The interference of radio broadcasts intensified, postal packages addressed to Britons regularly arrived manipulated, British communiqués to the newspapers were never published, the deliverers of the embassy newsletter were intercepted and in Barcelona the British Consulate complained of several cases of people detained for possession of BBC newsletters.49

The BBC intelligence department reported that the Spanish Service ‘clearly has increased its audience among Spaniards of all classes’.50 However, this did not improve its reputation at the British Embassy in Madrid. Hoare remained convinced that the effect of the broadcasts on the Spanish Government was extremely negative and, as a consequence, abysmal for Anglo-Spanish diplomatic relations.51 The repetitive complaints Samuel Hoare sent to London started to have their first consequences at the beginning of 1942 when, for the first time, the British Government questioned the professionalism of Martínez Nadal, star announcer of the BBC Spanish Service, and caused the resignation of John Marks, content supervisor of the Spanish broadcasts. Martínez Nadal managed to keep his job, for the time being, thanks to the support of Ivone Kirkpatrick.52

Noel Newsome also had his own reasons to complain. ‘We are wandering off the target’, he lamented in a letter to Kirkpatrick in March 1942.53 He declared that the European Service would hereafter act according to the strategy established by the Commanding Officer and not like a group of guerrillas, without cohesion, plans or fixed objectives.54 Meanwhile Hoare’s pressure on the Spanish Service was incessant and at the end of June the British press attaché in Madrid, Tom Burns, met Martínez Nadal in the Garrick Club in London. In this encounter Burns made Nadal aware of the continual reproaches from the senior members of Franco’s government against the Spanish Service who considered its programming partial and subversive.55 The impression Nadal got from this conversation was that the insistence of Burns formed part of a diplomatic chess game with Franco’s regime and that the BBC employees were no more than expendable pawns.56

On 4 September 1942, the BBC announced that Serrano Súñer had resigned as Minister of Foreign Affairs. The political disappearance of a figure so deeply committed to German Nazism could signal a turning point in the strategy aimed at Spain. On 18 November, a high level meeting took place at the BBC to deal with the broadcasts to Spain. Cadogan passed the results of the meeting to Ambassador Hoare. He defended the work of the BBC and sustained that despite what Hoare might think, there was close cooperation between the Ministry of Information, the BBC and the Foreign Office.57

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