page_title: Ramón Serrano Suñer
section_title: Early political career
hierarchical_section_title: Ramón Serrano Suñer / Early political career
caption_attribution_description: Español: Ramón Serrano Súñer, político franquista español, visita la Alemania nazi en 1940.
context_page_description: Ramón Serrano Suñer, was a Spanish politician during the first stages of the Francoist dictatorship, between 1938 and 1942, when he held the posts of President of the FET y de las JONS caucus, and then Interior Minister and Foreign Affairs Minister. A neofalangist originally from the CEDA, Serrano Suñer came to embody the most totalitarian impetus within the regime. Serrano Suñer was known for his pro-Third Reich stance during World War II, when he supported the sending of the Blue Division to fight along with the Wehrmacht on the Russian front. He was also the brother-in-law of the Spanish caudillo General Franco's wife Carmen Polo, for which he was nicknamed Cuñadísimo.
  Serrano Suñer was the founder of the 67,000-strong Spanish blind people's organization ONCE on 13 December 1938, as well as of the EFE press-agency, in 1939. Serrano Suñer also founded the Radio Intercontinental radio network in 1950.
context_section_description: Suñer was a member of the Cortes within the group of the right-wing CEDA although he did not formally join in the CEDA. Prior to the Spanish Civil War, he distanced himself from the CEDA and approached the Falange Española de las JONS but did not join it either. He had called the members of the youth wing JAP to flee to the Falange in the spring of 1936. After the military coup of July 1936 and the outbreak of the civil war, he was locked in a Republican prison. He escaped in October 1936, dressed as a woman, and was then helped by the Argentine navy in getting to France, from where he was able to reach Salamanca on 20 February 1937, wheee Franco was in office at the time. It was there that he could work with Franco to participate for the rebels in the civil war.
  In 1938, Serrano Suñer went to Nuremberg with Nicolás Franco, the brother of his brother-in-law, General Francisco Franco, probably to the 10th Nuremberg Rally (Reichsparteitag Grossdeutschland in German) of the Nazi Party, to celebrate the Anschluss, the union of Austria with Germany, kn March.
  Serrano Suñer served as Nationalist Minister of the Interior (1 February 1938 – 9 August 1939). When Franco amalgamated that ministry with the Ministry of Public Order ("Ministerio de Orden Público" in Spanish), a new name was created, the "Ministerio de la Gobernación", but the new name is now usually translated as "Ministry of the Interior". The merged was made by Franco on 9 August 1939, when Serrano Suñer became "Ministro de la Gobernación".
  Suñer also managed to re-elaborate the statutes of the Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las JONS, decreasing the political power of the Secretary General in favour of a newly created office, the President of the Political Council, to which he was appointed on 9 August 1936. He felt the office of Gobernación on 16 October 1940. Just the day before, 15 October 1940, the former president of the Generalitat of Catalonia, Lluis Companys, had been executed by a firing squad at Barcelona. On 13 August, Companys had been handed back by the Gestapo authorities of occupied Paris to the headhunter Spanish policeman and spy Pedro Urraca Rendueles, along with the extradition of Basque Minister of the Interior Julián Zugazagoitia, who had served under Republican Prime Minister Juan Negrín.
  While Serrano Suñer had been Minister of the Interior, the Minister of Foreign Affairs was General Juan Luis Beigbeder y Atienza, formerly a Military Attaché at the Spanish Embassy Berlin as an Army Commandant in 1926. Already as a colonel, he was the predecessor of Serrano Suñer as a Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs.
  In September 1940, the strongly pro-Axis Serrano Suñer visited Berlin to meet the German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop to discuss how Spain might best enter the war on the Axis side. During the meeting, Serrano Suñer presented a "shopping list" to Ribbentrop, saying Spain wanted Gibraltar from the British; all of French Morocco and Algeria "which belonged to Spain's Lebensraum" ; and about Portugal, he said: "Geographically speaking, Portugal has no right to exist". Additionally,  Serrano Suñer wanted generous promises of German military and economic support before Spain entered the war. Serrano Suñer and Ribbentrop did not get along, and they soon developed an intense mutual hatred of one another. Ribbentrop told Serrano Suñer that in return for military and economic aid and allowing the return of Gibraltar, Germany wanted to annex at least one of the Canary islands (Ribbentrop stated that he preferred that Germany have all of the Canaries but was prepared to be magnanimous by taking only one); that Germany be allowed air and naval bases in Spanish Morocco with extraterritorial rights; German companies to be given control of the mines in Spanish Morocco; and finally Ribbentrop wanted an economic treaty that would have turned Spain into an economic colony of Germany. For the pro-Axis Serrano Suñer, who had been expecting the Germans to treat Spain as an ally and an equal, to learn that the Germans viewed Spain as little more t
caption: Ramón Serrano Suñer during a visit to the headquarters of the LSSAH in Berlin-Lichterfelde, September 1940.
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