Throughout the Second World War, many people in Spain were under the hope that the victory of the Allies would trigger an invasion of Spain to defeat the dictatorship of Franco, a fascist who won the Civil War in 1939 thanks to the help of Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's Germany.
It is a known fact that Britain bribed Spain to stay out of Second World War. There are other reasons that are very well detailed in Why were Spain and Portugal neutral / not invaded in WWII?.
Despite all of this, there were quite a lot of volunteers, even many sent to Russia by the government itself (the División Azul to Russia).
Throughout the war, Spain's government moved from supporting the Axis Powers to calling themselves neutral. As it was fearing the defeat of the Axis Powers, things changed:
- by 1942-1943, executions of former Republicans decreased
- when Mussolini was captured in july 1943, Franco moved his position towards neutrality.
- general Franco got big pressionswas pressured to stop selling wolframtungsten to Germany (references in this page from Wikipedia in Spanish)
By February 1945, the Yalta Conference got an agreement that would be important to Spain:
The Big Three further agreed that democracies would be established, all liberated European and former Axis satellite countries would hold free elections and that order would be restored
However, the only thing that really happened was a gathering of volunteers onfor a guerrilla-like invasion:
Following the Spanish Civil War, many supporters of the former Republican government decided to start a movement to overthrow Franco; these members were called the Spanish Maquis. Several guerrilla raids occurred during the timeline of World War II, with most of them happening in 1944. One major confrontation happened in the Vale de Arán valley where a large group of rebels attacked and briefly occupied the north-western border of the Pyrenees. The government of France along with the Soviet Union organised, trained and armed a large group of Spaniards earlier liberated from the concentration camps where Spanish republicans had been held by the Front Populaire since they crossed the Spanish-French border at the end of the Spanish civil war in 1939. The battle lasted four days. The better trained and motivated Spanish Army under the command of the experienced General Moscardó immediately maneuvered to control the main strategic points of the valley and engaged the invaders, pushing them back across the border. The communists had underestimated popular support for the Francoist Regime, and no revolution began as they supposed.
Source: Spain during World War II
All in all, Spain got isolated, many war criminals got shelter in the country and the dictatorship managed to survive many years, until the death of Franco in 1975. This happened to the surprise of Republicans, who had already faced the coldness during the Civil War, when they suffered from the Non-intervention of the democracies.
Then, it was only by mid 1950s when Spain was on the focus again, when required to host some UNO's headquarters during the Cold War.
Why was this? What caused this coldness towards Spain despite being a Fascist regime? Were there any plans to force the fall of the regime?