SPAIN would normally have been celebrating its 30th anniversary as a member of the European Union in 2016, but a sombre note hangs over this landmark year as the country reflects on issues threatening the 'club', including the Brexit vote and increasing anti-EU sentiments in France, The Netherlands and elsewhere.
One-time vice-president of the European Commission, Spaniard Manuel Marín - who helped convince the other then member States to allow his native country to join - said he was one of the student diplomats at the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium, in 1973.
They were taken on day one to a ceremony housing the bodies of those who perished in the second World War, and reminded that this was the very reason the European Union existed.
Now, though, Spain is reflecting on a mixed history as a member State - austerity measures imposed by Brussels in light of national debts have caused hardship in Spain, and the country has narrowly escaped being fined for its continued, consistent failure to meet deficit targets.
And the lucrative trade agreement and political community has been shaken to the core by the Brexit vote, and the rising of the far right in some member States.
Bureaucracy, and very high expenses for MEPs and Commissioners, have come into question throughout, although most member States believe this can only be influenced by those who have a seat at the table - that is, each of the national leaders who make up the Council of Europe.
De Gaulle in 1944: “Spain can join when they get rid of Franco”
Three decades ago, joining the then European Economic Community (EEC), which would become the EU, was the launch-pad Spain needed to repair itself - it was still a very poor country with levels of illiteracy far higher than in any other civilised, western country, and had only known democracy for a decade after having been under a dictatorship spanning more than 40 years.
But the country's morale was given a sharp upwards push as its social and economic conditions went from strength to strength, achieving a drastic transformation in a relatively short time.
Of course, nowadays, the EU is a far cry from that which was designed by Altiero Spinelli, an Italian reporter exiled to Venice island after challenging the iron-fisted reign of Franco's ally, Benito Mussolini.
Spinelli wrote an open letter calling for a federal, united, but free Europe, in response to the mass killings he witnessed during the height of World War II - and this letter would form the basis to the European Coal and Steel Community, later to become the EEC and then the EU.
He wanted to see Europe becoming a 'united international force', ending nationalism and totalitarianism in individual States and protecting human rights, as a way of preventing a possible future World War III - given that the 1939-1945 conflict had left the equivalent of today's entire UK population dead in just six years.
Spinelli's idea was supported by the French Resistance, since president Charles de Gaulle and prominent diplomat Pierre Mendès France had decided to try to set up a 'European union' of France, Belgium, The Netherlands and Italy.
They said Spain would be asked to join them 'once they had got rid of Franco'.
It would take another 30 years, however, before Spain 'got rid of' its dictator, which only really happened when he died.
‘Repairing Spain’
Back in Franco's time, the European Union as it was then was symbolic of freedom from censorship and social and professional liberty - in fact, ex-European Parliamentary speaker José María Gil Robles says Spain used to be 'quite jealous of' students in universities elsewhere on the continent who were able to live as they wished and voice their opinions without reprisal...
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com