Text of Prime Minister's reply to General Franco      
 
                                                            
 
                         Your Excellency.                   
 
                                                            
 
 
Your Ambassador has communicated to the Foreign Secretary 
      a copy of your letter to the Duke of Alba in which you expressed 
      a desire for a clarification of relations between the British 
      and Spanish peoples, with a view to a closer and more intimate 
      relationship in the future. I have studied this document with 
      much interest and so have my colleagues of the War Cabinet. It 
      is our desire that relations between the British and Spanish 
      peoples should be close and cordial and I notice with some surprise 
      that Your Excellency attributes such difficulties as now exist 
      between Great Britain and Spain to the attitude of His Majesty's 
      Government and of British public opinion and to the activities 
      of British propaganda and British agents in Spain. I can assure 
      Your Excellency that your assertions regarding the activities 
      of British agents in Spain are entirely without foundation and 
      I can only suppose that your Government has been misled by allegations 
      of those persons whose obvious interest lies in disturbing the 
      relations between the British and Spanish peoples. I therefore 
      welcome all the more Your Excellency's suggestion that the time 
      is ripe for a clarification of the position and after full consultation 
      with my colleagues, and in the name of the War Cabinet, I take 
      this opportunity to set out to Your Excellency in complete frankness 
      the serious difficulties which in our view still hamper the satisfactory 
       development of relations between our two countries.  
 
                                                            
 
 
I must first remind Your Excellency of the policy, which your 
      Government has pursued so far in the present world war as this 
    policy has appeared to His Majesty's Government and to t
 
                                                            
 
 
                                                            
 
 REGRADED UNCLASSIFIED by British Govt., State Dept. tel., 3
 
                         By R. H. Parks                     
 
      Date MAY 5 l972