A Lockheed F-104G Starfighter of the Spanish Air Force, where it was called C-8.
The Ala (Wing) 12 was the first unit to be equipped the C-8. All in all, Spain bought 18 F-104G and 3 TF-104G
which remained in service until 1972, when they were replaced by 36 F-4C Phantom II.
141. Second Esplà Ministry (1963-1967) -2-
The death of King Federico I (February 6, 1965) and the smooth succession of his elder son to the throne as Federico II of Spain, the last monarch of the country, would have gone unnoticed but for the coverage of the press. Federico, who had reigned for almost 40 years (since March 14, 1925), had been the almost invisible head of the state and had remained outside from the public eye but for the most important official ceremonies, like the opening of the Cortes. However, his son was not to be so measured and cautious. However, nothing of that was obvious in 1965 and the rise of the new king to the throne was widely celebrated all over the country.
It was around this time when Esplà opened his new international policy by visiting the United Kingdom, Germany, Russia and the United States, which led the Spanish Prime Minister to state in the press the full support of his government to London and Washington in their fights for freedom, both in Africa and Asia, which signalled a new stage in the Spanish international policies. from 1965 onwards. Esplà was also to increase his efforts to create legal equality for women and to bring official bilingualism in the Basque Country and Catalonia into being. In 1967, just before the General Elections, both Basque and Catalan were made official language in their respective areas, and the Spanish government provided services in both Spanish and Basque/Catalan, something that raised a great controversy in the right wing of the conservative party.
In addition to this, Esplà made another effort to bring back to life the Mancomunidad Hispana. This time, he included in his proposal a single currency to all the members of the Union, a measure that was not too liked by the Latin-American presidents which were invited to discuss the topic in Madrid during the Spring of 1966. Eventually, only the Argentinian and Chilean prime ministers, Arturo U. Illia and Eduardo Frei Montalva, supported Esplà. Over the course of a meeting celebrated at Buenos Aires (1967), the three governments agreed to fix their exchange rates during ten years before launching the new common currency. However, the establishment of a single currency caused a political storm in Spain as it was against the Spanish economic orthodoxy, which stressed the importance of national control over monetary supply; thus, the common currency was inmediately and bitterly opposed by the conservative Democratic Party (PDE).
Sensing some disconfort about this issue in the Spanish society and fuelling with claims that the Liberal Party was giving too much privileges to the local Catalan and Basque governments, Martínez's PDE, hoping to capitalize the social unrest in the incomming elctions of 1967, pressed the government and accused Esplà of surrendering the intertnational independence of Spain, as it would be tied by her compromisese in the Mancomunidad Hispana. It was then when the Catalan and Basque leaders (Tarradellas and Ajuriaguerra) annouced the creation of the Alianza Democrática (AD - Democratic Alliance), a federation of the Nationalist Catalan, Basque and Gallician parties: ERC, PNV and BNG, which would join forces and take part together in the next General Elections.
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