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4.
My talks with Perpiná-Robert were primarily on administrative questions, and there is little worth recording. He was at particular pains to question me about the way in which we coordinate European Community affairs; he is clearly worried at the extent to which individual ministries in Madrid summon and instruct their respective officials in the office of the Spanish Permanent Representative in Brussels, and was at something of a loss to know how to control them. I gave him a fairly full explanation of the way in which both we and the Cabinet Office organise ourselves, and which I think he found helpful.
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5. My talks with Cajal concentrated very largely on Spanish negotiations with the Americans about their bases in Spain. My visit coincided with a visit by Mr Weinberger, and Cajal's explanation to me of the Spanish position (reported separately by telegram from Madrid) did not take into account the full round of Mr Weinberger's talks. I was struck however by the extent to which the Spaniards are digging themselves into a hole, from which they are likely to find it increasingly difficult to extract themselves. took advantage of a reference by Cajal to "the allied dimension" to make it clear to him that we did indeed see an allied dimension in Spain's negotiations with the Americans, and that we very much hoped that Spain and the United States would reach an agreement which did not damage that dimension. I said that we were concerned about the Washington view of the relationship between the United States and Europe, particularly in the aftermath of a series of transatlantic disagreements on both trade and other questions. I thought that it was important to correct any impression of decoupling the United States from Europe, whether expressed in general political terms or in specific calls for pulling back United States forces from Europe. I later relayed an account of what both Cajal and I had said to the United States Ambassador in Madrid, who expressed warm appreciation. Bartholomew himself seemed somewhat more optimistic that the Spaniards would start to soften their line on bases as time went by. In the Gibraltar context, Bartholomew commented that even the Spaniards could only fight on a limited number of fronts at one time.
6.
As you would expect, my talk with Ezquerra was almost entirely dominated by Gibraltar, after he had invited me to sit in front of a large map of Gibraltar hanging on his office wall. But the tone of his remarks was, I understand, considerably softer than usual, and Lord Nicholas (who accompanied me) was surprised to hear Ezquerra proposing that some cooperation on environmental and ecological questions might be put in hand between Gibraltar and Spain.
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