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1986
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With the fall of their two totalitarian regimes, Spain and Portugal (we remind you that by the mid thirties General Franco seized power in Spain and in Portugal the dictator Salazar first and Caetano after him made the same; these dictators have been in power for 40 years) become part of the big European family and therefore the first fundamental action of these two new democratic governments is obviously to ask the other European Community’s members to accept them. So a negotiation opens and sometimes it has not been easy, because, as it happens in every family, when there is a discussion about economic issues, some tensions can arise. The tensions could also be related to the fact that the agricultural products coming from Spain and Portugal might have competed with the agricultural products coming from France or Italy. Finally an agreement is achieved thanks to these negotiations that involved the ten countries of the European Community (because by now Greece had already become a member state): by the mid eighties the Community opens up to Spain, towards the whole Iberian peninsula, and so by 1st January 1986 the members of the Community are 12. The presence of the Iberian peninsula in the European Community involves a series of important issues. The first one concerns the strengthening of the Latin culture within the Community, because besides Italy and France, the European Community accepts two other countries whose history is full of events linked to the development of Europe. Secondly, Spain and especially Portugal, which are two countries with wide relatively developing and also underdeveloped areas. So the presence of Spain and Portugal, besides the well-known problems of southern Italy and Greece, makes it essential, inevitable and necessary to consolidate solidarity from the richest countries. Therefore, the aid measures for the regions in difficulty increase and consequently, the regional and social policies are consolidated. The third fundamental issue linked to the introduction of the Iberian peninsula within the Community is the fact that Portugal still has some relationships with its former colonies, in particular with its former African colonies; and Spain, together with Portugal, still has some relationships with Brazil and as far as Spain itself is concerned, they have relationships with the whole Latin American continent. So all this enriches the European Community, not only because there are two more languages, Spanish and Portuguese, but also because the European culture increases, enriches and strengthens itself. This demonstrates that an enlargement of the European Union and of its community involves more benefits than disadvantages, because of the opening of further markets, because there is a bigger circulation of citizens, professions, goods and products and all this makes Europe a more and more important area that is able to negotiate world-wide. The enlargement also involves the arrival, on a European scale, of a series of leaders, such as the Spanish Felipe Gonzales, or the Portuguese Mario Soares, two great characters in the history of Europe in the eighties.
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