Enlarged Central Council

The ELEC's Spanish Committee: a chronicle of its 50 years

The ELEC's Spanish Comité commemorates its 50 anniversary with the book 1956-2006: De la autarquía a la Constitución Europea ("1965-2006: From Autocracy to the European Constitution"). The book, a chronicle of the Committee's evolution from its establishment to the present times in the context of the relationships between Spain and Europe during the last half century, was officially presented last Saturday 1st June.

02.06.2006

The book 1956-2006: De la autarquía a la Constitución Europea explains how the Spanish Committee worked during all these years to help the rapprochement to Europe of an autocratic Spain, initially skeptical and reluctant to establish ties with Europe, with the subsequent goal to obtain a preferential agreement with the European Community at the beginning of the 1960's decade, to end up as a full rights member in the European institutions on January 1st, 1986.

The President of the Spanish Committee, Mr. Carles A. Gasòliba, recalled that the idea started out as a proposal of his predecessor, Lorenzo Gascón, of having a written document about the history of the Committee. The idea culminated with this chronicle that combines the facts ocurred within the Spanish section of the League, its relationship with the central ELEC, and the relationship between Spain and the European institutions during these fifty years.

During the presentation, the secretary general for the European Union of the Ministery of Foreign Affaires and Cooperation of the Spanish Government, Mr. Miguel Ángel Navarro, reminded that the book allows us to see how the idea of Europe in Spain has gone from being a concept initially limited to politicians and institutions, to a concept that needs the full cooperation of civil society. To commemorate the current 20th anniversary of the entry of Spain in the European Union, his Ministery – a sponsor of the Spanish Section book – has launched the campaign ‘Hablamos de Europa' ("Let's talk about Europe") to familiarize the citizenship with Europeanism.

On his turn, the President of the Spanish Federal Council of the European Movement, Mr. Carlos Mª Bru, underlined that the autocracy in Spain that the book talks about was in 1956 more a necessity than a theory. Bru recalled that during these fifty years, but especially before the end of Franco's regime, organizations such as the ELEC and the European Movement were the main representatives of the Europeanist civil society. The cooperation between both organisms, according to Mr. Bru, is also very necessary today, especially now that we are faced with the challenge to approve the document that must legally sustain the EU, referring to the new European Constitution.

The event was closed by the President of the ELEC, Mr. Anton van Rossum, who made an ironic appeal to the ‘Barcelona conspiracy' of the ELEC members to recover optimism before the future of the EU, finding a parallelism with the ‘Munich conspiracy', which is how the Spanish dictatorship called the appeal made by the European International Movement in 1962 to the full democratization of any country willing to join or associate with the European Community. Some members of the ELEC's Spanish Committee where present in the mentioned gathering at the Bavarian capital, and thus received their consequent ‘punishment' from the Franco regime upon their return.

Before Mr. Van Rossum's speech, the authors of the book, journalists Roc Fages Ramió and Fernando López Mompó, were invited on stage to conclude the presentation, along with one of the founders of the Spanish Committee, Mr. Carlos de Montoliu.