The Cuban Missile Crisis in the Spanish press, October-November 1962

The purpose of this article is to analyze the reception in Francoist Spain of the so-called Cuban Missile Crisis, a key episode of the Cold War that had as protagonists two superpowers (United States and the Soviet Union) and Cuba at the end of October and November 1962 and that has not been previously treated by any specific study. Thus, this work will examine the reaction of some of the leading Spanish newspapers to the different phases of the event, complementing this main source with the review of Spanish and North American archives. The position of the Spanish press in the face of the October Crisis reflected the paradoxes of the Franco regime, which controlled the press directly or indirectly. In any case, all the newspapers showed an unquestionable concern at the beginning of the Crisis and did not hide their satisfaction at the end of the Crisis and the withdrawal of the Cuban missiles. However, their vision of the crisis was essentially defined by the regime's primary anticommunism, which made them regret what they considered a missed opportunity to overthrow Castroism, and by the regime's desire to position itself in the Western world as a privileged ally of the United States.