On June 12th, 1985, after arduous and lengthy negotiations for 23 years, the treaty by which Spain was incorporated as a full member of the European Economic Community (EEC) was signed in a solemn ceremony held at the Royal Palace of Madrid.

Thirty years later, after successive transmutations of the European monopoly project that has resulted in what we now know as the European Union, this project suffers today the greatest disaffection in the last three decades by the workers and popular masses in our country. According to the Euro-barometer of autumn 2013, only 81% of Spaniards claim to be little or nothing informed about European affairs, twelve points above the European average. In the same vein, 71% of respondents declared their distrust of the European Central Bank, 65% of the European Commission and 67% of the European Parliament. Such rejection is by no means fortuitous, but is directly linked to the management conducted by the European Community institutions, that is openly contrary to the interests of the Spanish working people: in relation to the role of the EU in the economic crisis, 45% of respondents stated that this was marching in a wrong direction [1].

However, the damage caused by the European monopoly project to the working and living conditions of the majority of the working class and popular sectors in Spain is not merely a temporary issue. The intrinsic anti-social logic of the European monopoly project involved, even before the formal incorporation of our country into the EEC, a tremendously negative impact for the workers and the people of our country. However, it had the necessary complicity of the political forces mired in the field of opportunism, who echoed the false promises of the parties of the oligarchy about the necessary and positive adhesion of Spain to the European common market. But there were those who, from the very moment of their appearance on the Spanish political scene, assumed the revolutionary principles long forgotten by others as founding values and did not capitulate under any circumstances in the denounce and the struggle against the European monopoly project that represented the EEC - and that the EU represents now - even in the most complicated scenarios of the class struggle in Spain.

As is known, the incorporation of Spain to the wide range of European institutions born after the end of World War II developed belatedly and in a highly controversial way for more than two decades. With the ratification of the Constitutive Treaty of the EEC included in the Treaties of Rome of 1957, the previous general attitude of indifference of some of the European states to the process of convergence started after the end of World War II [2] was transformed into a growing interest by the regime in the evolution of the common European market. Thus, the Interministerial Commission for the Study of the European Communities (CICE, Spanish acronym) was created that year in order to monitor their development. In 1962, the Foreign Affairs Minister, Castiella, made a formal request to negotiate a definitive link to the EEC.

At the launching of the Stabilization Plan of 1959, the Franco government made an institutional consultation to some of the main bodies of the Francoist regime’s apparatus. This consultation included, among other questions, which position should Spain adopt in relation to the EEC. The body who more openly stressed the need for immediate incorporation into the EEC was the Institute of Agricultural Studies, given its interest in increasing exports. On the contrary, institutions such as the Official Council of Offices and Chambers of Industry, the National Confederation of Savings Banks, the Banking Council and the National Institute of Industry (INI) expressed divergent positions ranging from caution to belligerence.

However, already in 1962 and once the application for membership of the EEC had been done, the newspaper “YA” published relevant statements from entrepreneurs like Emilio Botin and Joaquín Areces, who expressed their support to the Spanish accession [3]. Thus, on the basis of some initial reluctance to reach widespread acceptance, the various factions of the bourgeois-oligarchic bloc expressed their different interests in relation to the convergence of European markets: on the one hand those favorable to the single market, mainly the major industry with exports orientation, located mainly in Catalonia and the Basque Country, and the large landowners interested in strengthening trade ties with member states of the EEC; on the other hand, those who were more reticent to the harsh competition from European monopoly groups – more concentrated and diversified than the Spanish ones-, mostly companies interested in maintaining Francoist [4] autarkic policies.

However, the answer to the Spanish request would take time. Different complications and contingencies delayed for eight years the final response from the Council of Ministers of the EEC. Despite the good reception of some member states whose media highlighted the positive economic impact of Spanish accession to the European capitalist economies, the pressure of the popular movement frustrated the early expectations of the regime. Only with the support of the governments of France and the German Federal Republic, Spain managed to unlock its request and partially overcome the Italian resistance motivated by the interests of their agricultural exports, as well as the Belgian and Dutch negatives founded in the openly dictatorial character of Franco regime, whose policy of brutal repression at the moment had terrible episodes of a major international impact, such as the summary trial and subsequent execution of communist activist Julian Grimau [5]. The agreement, therefore, would be a compromise: given the impossibility of Spain’s accession to the EEC, a general preferential trade agreement would be proposed. An agreement negotiated in two phases which only consisted of partial tariff reductions to Spanish products [6].

That approach highlighted one of the deepest contradictions of the Franco regime in its last years of existence: the benefit increase of the big Spanish monopolies, their increasing concentration and diversification, could only be guaranteed through the incorporation of Spain to the dynamics of economic interdependence articulated on the European continent, which came into clear antagonism with the Francoist autarkic model and its political and legal superstructure. This model made the internationalization of the Spanish capital and the entry of foreign capital in Spanish territory a very difficult task. Thus, for the first time in its history, Spanish capitalism had access to a market of over 200 million consumers.

On June 29, 1970, the Preferential Economic Agreement between Spain and the EEC was signed in Luxembourg. While the Francoist authorities presented this arrangement to the public as a triumph of Spanish diplomacy that would inevitably result in full association, the truth is that it was a similar agreement to those already established between the EEC and Morocco or Tunisia, non Euroepan countries but holding strong economic ties with the former colonial power, and whose respective applications were presented later than the Spanish one. It was, therefore, an unfinished project that did not completely satisfy the needs of Spanish capitalism.

The ability of Francoist regime to optimally manage such demands was put into question when, as a result of the incorporation of Great Britain, Ireland and Denmark to the common market and the French rejection of the extension of the agreement with Spain, Spain was included in the Global Mediterranean Policy, thus hurting the partial benefits of the agreement of 1970. With the abandonment of its main supporter, the French government, with whom an increasingly sharp competition in agriculture was shaping - the Francoist authorities entered a spiral of gradual worsening of relations with the EEC as a consequence of the death throes of the Francoist dictatorship against the Spanish workers’ and people’s movement, such as the so-called “Process 1001”, the execution of the anarchist Salvador Puig Antich and the executions by firing squad on 25th September, 1975. Despite successive diplomatic crisis and the wave of international solidarity, economic sanctions of any kind were never imposed to the brutal regime of Franco, as the Spanish economy was already inserted in the interdependence relations of the EEC and it had attracted a considerable amount of foreign investment [7], progressively displacing who had been the main investor in Spain since the post-war, the United States [8]. As expected, industrial and domestic executives flatly rejected any measure that, de facto, would mean the undermining of their own interests.

A few weeks after the death of General Franco, the Spanish Foreign Minister, Areilza, traveled to nine European capitals in order to meet a wide range of national and EEC authorities, bearing the message that the program of political reforms proposed by the Minister Fraga would culminate with the application for full incorporation into the European common market. The modernization of the exercise of capitalist domination in Spain according to European standards and the gradual articulation of a bourgeois-democratic regime through the Law for Political Reform represented indisputable requirements for the incorporation of Spain to the EEC, without meaning a full and profound break with the previous dictatorship.

Thus, already under the government of Adolfo Suárez, who had been Minister-Secretary General of the Movement, the demand of accession of Spain to the European common market appeared again. Despite repeated inconveniences brought by the French government of d'Estaing and Mitterrand - related, as in the past, with the rivalry of Spanish products in the agricultural and fisheries markets - President Felipe González would eventually sign the Treaty of Accession of Spain to the European Economic Community in 1986. After waiting for nearly 25 years, Spanish capitalism had reached what undoubtedly represented a milestone that would mark its future development, breaking the old barriers of autarky and isolation to fully join the European interstate alliance and, by extension, the world imperialist system.

With the request made by the minister Castiella in 1962 for the opening of negotiations, most of the movement against the Francoist regime expressed its opposition to the accession of Spain to the EEC, albeit with important nuances. The Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) from Llopis expressed criticism of the attention paid by the common market to the Spanish request to the extent that it involved an active granting of political legitimacy to an openly dictatorial government. But in its press organ, The Socialist, abounded compliments to the EEC as the institution carrier of the bourgeois-democratic values ​​of its member countries, in the wake of other European socialist parties.

On the other hand, the Communist Party of Spain (PCE) initially exhibited as totally dissatisfied with the incorporation of Spain to the European common market. The position reflected in the Programme for the Sixth Congress of the PCE in 1960 was a full rejection to the integration of Spain in organisms promoted by European and American monopolies, "opposing the stabilization plan and the "European integration" of Spain meant to struggle against the colonization of the country by foreign monopolies, against the destruction of its industry, the depopulation of vast rural areas, to avoid an economic disaster without precedent” [9]. Thus, unlike other bourgeois or petty-bourgeois political forces like the monarchists, the Christian Democrats, liberals, socialists, and the Basque and Catalan nationalists, the PCE would be the only party opposing the regime who would not be officially represented at the Fourth Congress of the European Movement in 1962 -called by the press of the regime as "conspiracy of Munich" - because of the veto of the organizers, not being the PCE an organization with a European orientation in favour of the accession of Spain to the European common market.

This Congress, which issued a statement proposed by the Spanish delegates where the bid for the linking with the nascent European capitalist institutions was clearly expressed [10], had also a strong anti-communist character, given the origins of the orgnizing entity, some of whose promoters where people like Winston Churchill or Konrad Adenauer.

However, this position of political consistency would not last long. The advent of Euro-communism in the ranks of the PCE would eventually spark a deep transformation in the conception held on the EEC so far and in the design of a strategy and tactics consistent with the political situation in Spain the and the revolutionary principles. The ideological capitulation that had started years earlier would result in the fact that the Eighth Congress of the PCE, in 1972, adopted the controversial decision of accepting the entry of Spain into the common market. The reformist positions would also be corroborated by the Second Conference of the PCE in 1975, held with the goal of approving its Manifesto-Programme, which stated that "in the current situation, monopolies run the Common Market and exploit it to their advantage. It is necessary to achieve, through the mass struggle in each country, through their higher cooperation at European level, that the working class, the progressive forces, transform the character of the European Economic Community in a democratic sense” [11].

In the same vein, the Ninth Congress of the PCE, in 1976, infamous for serving as explicit formalization of the permanent abandonment of Marxism-Leninism, delved into the thesis of the transformation of the EEC into a body of socialist orientation, giving the European monopoly project an identity in the international arena and the ability to meet the needs and interests of the broad workers’ majorities from the European states: "We believe that those who oppose the entry of Spain into the European Economic Community give back to the conveniences of a democratic, progressive process within that community. The PCE, when advocating for the entry of Spain into the EEC, declares its willingness to transform, alongside other forces of the left in Europe, the current character of the Community, dominated by big monopolies. We aspire to a Europe of the workers, the Europe of the people: a Europe united in the economic and political fields, that has its own independent policy; that is not subordinate nor the United States nor the Soviet Union, but maintains positive relations with both powers; a Europe that is an autonomous factor in world politics, helping to overcome the military blocs and the bipolar system, to democratize international life, facilitating greater freedom for all people, to be masters of their destiny." [12]

Contrary to what one might expect, the incorporation of Spain into the European common market and the accomplice stance of the PCE in this regard did not have a full backing by their Italian and French counterparts. While the former had no qualms about expressing their support for the Spanish Euro-communist, even expressing this commitment to President Suárez by the mouth of the Secretary General of the Italian Communist Party, Enrico Berlinguer [13], the French showed their strong opposition to the association of Spain to the EEC on several occasions. Such refusal, far from being grounded in the most basic exercise of class internationalism towards the Spanish working people, was built on the basis of a purely social-chauvinist [14] position, trying to extract electoral gains of discontent among the farmers of southern and central France [15]. Anyway, the leadership of the PCE would remain undaunted in their desire to support the negotiation process even in its most difficult times, coming to present themselves, during the general election campaign of 1982, as a guarantor that the incorporation of Spain would occur before January 1st, 1984 [16].

The expulsion in 1985 of the former Secretary General of the PCE for over 25 years, and main but not sole author of Euro-communism in Spain, Santiago Carrillo, did not mean in any way the neglect or condemnation of the positions that had supported the attitude of active collaboration with the European common market.

In fact, the PCE still promotes the vision of a possible change in the orientation of the European Union, being today one of the most active players in the ellaboration and spreading of the policies of the European Left Party (ELP), who promotes the “reform” of the European Central Bank, a more “federal” European Union or a EU's “tax system” [17].

However, the celebration of the Communist Unity Congress in 1984 and the subsequent establishment of the PC – later PCPE - would be an important milestone with regard to the attitude of the Spanish communists against the European imperialist project and meant the definitive demarcation between reformist and revolutionary positions in many issues, among them the position towards the EEC (today EU).

The denounce of the non reformable character of the EEC, in a positive sense for the living and working conditions of the Spanish working people and the consequent rejection of the incorporation of Spain to the EEC would both be articulated as founding principles of the newly created party, as expressed in the Congress itself: "The process of integration into the EEC, now underway, is clearly contrary to the interests of the country, and firstly to the interests of workers and popular layers. Consistent with this idea, the Communist Party is opposed to this integration and demands cessation of the current process" [18]. Once again, workers and popular masses of our country had a revolutionary party that started from a position of uncompromising struggle against the European monopoly project and the Spanish incorporation to it, whose effects and damages would soon be noticed.

Given that Spanish capitalism started with a clear disadvantage when negotiating the terms of its accession to the EEC, these exact terms would represent an act of repeated concessions from the government of Spain to its European counterparts, involving, inter alia, the forced subordination to Community law, the almost complete disappearance of the large public business park inherited from the Francoist regime, and the worsening conditions of life and work of the Spanish working people.

In the legal field, the incorporation of Spain to the EEC simultaneously entailed its commitment to the law that had started to emerge already since the adoption of the Constitutive Treaty. By creating this new Community law, the recently created European Commission de facto arrogated the power of legislative initiative that would allow the harmonization of different national laws in an increasing range of issues and areas, thereby setting the fundamental economic basis of the European monopoly project. As reads Article 100 of the treaty, "The Council shall, acting unanimously on a proposal from the Commission, issue directives for the approximation of such provisions laid down by law, regulation or administrative action in Member States as directly affect the establishment or functioning of the common market" [19].

Besides treaties as primary law, the European law would have a wide range of derivative sources - regulations, directives, decisions, recommendations and opinions - which in most cases would be mandatory, even when these came into conflict with the domestic laws of any member country. Under Article 189, "A regulation shall have general application. It shall be binding in its entirety and directly applicable in all Member States. A directive shall be binding, as to the result to be achieved, upon each Member State to which it is addressed, but shall leave to the national authorities the choice of form and methods. A decision shall be binding in its entirety upon those to whom it is addressed. Recommendations and opinions shall have no binding force" [20]. Thus, the European monopoly project endowed the tools for the construction of a legal framework in the image and likeness of its own interests, in the first instance commonly referred to the economic side of this building. Not surprisingly, the first directive issued by the Community institutions - the 68/151/ EEC of March 9, 1968 - would focus on the safeguards required to commercial companies by Member States, especially to those companies that transcend the national territory of the country, in order to protect the interests of members and investors and, thus, safeguard the appropriate development of the internationalization of capital in Europe.

The establishment of the customs union, the free movement of persons, services and capital and the subsequent gradual removal of tariff barriers that levied goods from abroad, led the Spanish trade balance to move from surplus to a significant deficit only in a few years: in October 1986, imports from the EEC increased by 65'8% compared to October the previous year, while exports had increased by only 7.7% [21]. This expressed the difficulties of the Spanish companies in face of the competition from the big European monopolies, both in product quality and price, especially those companies that, already then, were the main players in the Spanish business sector, small and medium companies. Such antagonism could only find resolution through the closure of a large number of these companies, causing at the same time the appearance of a high rate of structural unemployment that has endured over the past three decades and has been accentuated since the beginning of the global capitalist crisis in 2007 [22].

Nevertheless, the most important issue was the unprecedented increase of Foreign Direct Investment of European origin, absorbed massively by Spain immediately after joining the common market: out of the 4715.12 billion pesetas that arrived to our country as FDI from 1962-1990, about 75% would occur between 1986 and 1990. Similarly, if during the period from 1978 to 1985 the total FDI in Spain was 945.04 billion pesetas, only in the following four years -1986 to 1990 - this would experience an increase over 370%, with a total amount of 3,502.48 billion pesetas [23].

The transformation caused by this phenomenon was decisive for the transition of Spanish capitalism from a late development and relative isolation to its total integration in the global monopoly system. An analysis of the origin of these investments underscores the growing role of the countries of the EEC monopolies in our country: if from 1978 to1985 the FDI ​​originating in the EEC was 401.7 billion pesetas - 41% of the total amount - in the period 1986-1989 it would be 1309.8 billion pesetas, reaching 57.87% and representing 1.49% of the Gross Domestic Product of the country [24].

The reception of such amounts of foreign investment is directly related to the gradual privatization of hitherto public Spanish companies in the framework of industrial restructuring policies begun in the eighties, but extremely heightened following the accession of Spain to the EEC [25]. Most of this FDI would aim to acquire companies in a difficult financial situation at low cost, whether public or private. Generally, the former state monopolies or oligopolies came to have a shareholder list with a significant presence of foreign investors, but with a special preponderance of some major Spanish banks like Banco Santander and BBVA, when not directly delivered to big European monopolies - as was the case of SEAT, transferred to Volkswagen by the National Institute of Industry [26]. Thus, the European monopolies passed to control privileged distribution and commercialization channels in the Spanish market, often using our country as an export platform to other EEC countries, given the significantly lower price of the workforce in our country.

All the above described process could only be realizable due to a considerable increase in exploitation of workers in our country. As evidenced by the studies conducted, in the period of the industrial restructuring sponsored by the EEC and the subsequent accession of Spain, an increase of exploitation that was unprecedented in the economic history of capitalism in our country [27] would occur. As a result of the uneven development of capitalism on a world scale, and the characteristics of industrialization of Spain under increasing international division of labour, the price of the incorporation of our country to the increasingly deeper relationships of interdependence in the framework of the EEC would be unquestionably high.

Against the illusory forecasts of the oligarchy spokespersons, the "modernization" of Spain and its productive basis in a comparable way to other European capitalist countries, whose industry is based on high value-added sectors, would be an impossible pipe-dream. In that sense, the productive specialization of our country would be based on maintaining a low cost of labour force to ensure higher levels of competitiveness, as well as other member countries of the EEC like Greece and Portugal, and unlike other as the Central and Nordic states, who took over an industrial specialization with a strong technological component [28].

In the European frame, the capitalist economic and political construction, embodied in the past by the EEC and by the EU today, is a project which is inextricably linked to the interests of the monopolies of our continent from its very inception. Consequently, its nature is essentially reactionary and contrary to the interests of the international working class. There is no doubt on who have been the main victims of the accession of Spain to the EEC: the working class, under increasing exploitation rates and higher unemployment figures, and some popular layers exposed in a brutal way to an intense process of proletarianization. While an important part of the productive sector experienced a serious setback because of the superiority of their new European competitors, other sectors of the Spanish capitalism considerably improved their position by taking advantage of new dynamics of internationalization of capital and integrating themselves into the increasingly dense relations of interdependency within the European common market.

Unlike the positions held by many of the organizations of opportunism, the communist proposal makes no defense of the so-called founding principles of the European Union. According to opportunists, those founding principles would have eventually been perverted by the course of events, with the signature of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992.

Today, in a country fully inserted into the imperialist world system such as Spain, the enhancement of the communist proposal on the issues addressed here is a decisive task, that cannot be delayed, for the future development of the class struggle and the strengthening of the revolutionary organizations. The right direction of the ideological struggle in any country should go hand by hand with deep and scientific study of its particular historical development if that struggle does not want to be merely an abstract slogan. At the same time, it should serve as the fundamental basis for the propaganda and divulgation work among the masses if it pretends to transcend the narrow confines of rhetoric and speculation.

Of course, this demands to go through further study of the European affairs from a class stance and through the confrontation against the reformist thesis within the workers' and people's movement, especially when the forces of reformism are directly involved in the capitalist management of the existing misery, even being aware of its limited mandate and powers.

The so-called European Communist Initiative [29], from which PCPE is a founding member and where other parties participating in this International Communist Review are also included, dedicates a big part of its tasks to this goal. This task is very important, given the fact that the political struggle is inextricably linked to the ideological struggle.

As far as the future is concerned, there is no doubt that the anti-social policies of the monopolies will continue to be the central themes of a European Union in decline who sees how it is being displaced by other emerging capitalist powers in terms of economic, political and military power.

In face of this uncertain scenario, the negotiations opened between the US Department of Commerce and the European Commission in what has come to be called Transatlantic Partnership for Trade and Investment (TTIP) represent a possible and temporary way of solving such a situation, bearing in direct exchange an absolute worsening of life and work conditions of the workers' and people's majorities of all EU countries. Regardless of geo-economic considerations about the meaning and purpose of this large area of free trade and investment, as our Party has stated in previous occasions [30], its direct and indirect consequences are an open declaration of war against the working people to which the International Communist Movement should have to pay the necessary attention if we want to battle it out steadfastly.