Searching for its place: the role of Spain in the Madrid CSCE Conference (1980-1983)

Abstract

This article aims to know the role of Spain in the Madrid conference (1980-1983), a meeting organized by the main multilateral forum for the promotion of distention in Europe during the Cold War: the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE). Thus, by crossing the information offered by the bibliographic sources and the information provided by the national and international primary sources consulted, we aspire to shed light on an unnoticed process, despite its great impact on the political evolution of Spain and Europe. The first one was immersed itself in a definition process of what should be the guiding lines of its action in the field of foreign policy -after its progressive transformation towards a fully democratic State-; and the second one was in a context of growing international tension, following the unleashing of the Euro-Missile crisis, an event which determined the relationship between the Eastern and the Western bloc during the last years of the Cold War.