Talk:Spain–United States relations#Split

I miss some mention of the conspiracy theories about the CIA attitudes towards Operación Ogro (Carrero Blanco's murder) and 23-F.

I also miss a mention of Bienvenido Mr Marshall that still colors perceptions of American money in Spain (see recent reporting on Eurovegas for examples)

--Error (talk) 01:46, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

I also miss the Hispanic Society. --Error (talk) 01:47, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

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• Should the first sentence in the article be: "The troubled history of Spanish–American relations has been seen as one of 'love and hate'"? It links to El Siglo de Europa, a Spanish "political weekly information website", instead of, you know, an actual newspaper or academic source. It sounds ambiguous and unencyclopedic. What is love, and what is hate?
• I'm not a native speaker of English at all, but I have trouble making sense of this sentence: "The groundwork was laid by the colonization of parts of the Americas by Spain before 1700." The groundwork of what ("love and hate")? Before 1700 is also not very specific regarding time and location.

• "As the Cold War deepened after 1950, Washington threw a lifeline to the Francoist dictatorship that included financial aid and military bases." I think "throwing a lifeline" is too soft and there is almost no coverage on the United States' continued support of Franco's dictatorship after the 1950s because of its anti-communist policy. Why not mention two U.S. military bases of Morón Air Base and Naval Station Rota, which date back to the Cold War. Financial aid could be quantified as well.

• I would also like to comment on this sentence: Although the Spanish elements in the history of the United States were mostly ignored by American historians in the decades after independence, the concept of the "Spanish borderlands" in the American Southwest was developed by American historians in the 20th century, which integrated Spain into U.S. history." This long sentence introduces the concept of "Spanish borderlands" without explaining it. Instead of focusing on American historians' ignorance, shouldn't the actual focus be on the real settlements/influence in places like Florida or the West Coast? A lasting influence could also be Spanish toponyms of many cities and several states, and so on.
• No reference to Spanish public opinion which is later covered in the article.

I wouldn't like to edit the lead without knowing if you agree/disagree? I would do it at a later point in time. Great Cod (talk) 22:28, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

:I agree with every point you make. I would like to add that the first sentence of the article does feel strange, so I tried to compare it with other articles that have similar content, i.e. relations between different nations. What I found was that any article that had the United States and another nation shared in this article's theme of verboseness and peculiar language in the first sentence, not quite as strange as this incident though. This is in stark contrast to other relations pages of smaller countries, such as the Canada or New Zealand, in which their first sentences are nearly identical. They often look like: Canada-New Zealand relations are a set of bilateral agreements between the nations of Canada and New Zealand.

:I definitely think that first sentence should be changed on this article specifically, and maybe even a more broad look should be taken at articles about United States relations to understand why they're so different from similar articles.

:As for the other confusing parts of the article, I agree they need to be changed for the reasons you've listed. IAustonFox (talk) 07:24, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

There is a lot of historical content in this article that can be split into a separate article at History of Spain–United States relations. I propose splitting out all history until either 1945 (end of World War II) or 1989 (end of Cold War). My idea of a split until 1945 can be seen by looking at the split-out content at [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=History_of_Spain%E2%80%93United_States_relations&oldid=1288586786] and the post-split version of this article at [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Spain%E2%80%93United_States_relations&oldid=1288587232]. I don't think that recent decades of history should be split out though. GreekApple123 (talk) 16:40, 3 May 2025 (UTC)

:As per WP:BALASP, I don't think that developments since 1945 should be discussed at that level of detail when pre-WW2 content is dealt with in a single paragraph. Comparing the proposed version with the stable one, I prefer the stable one. Needless to say, the proposal by GreekApple123 added another clunky feature, which was repeating the same thing in three different places with basically the same content depth.--Asqueladd (talk) 16:43, 3 May 2025 (UTC)

::I don't think this has anything to do with balance in the level of detail in the coverage. It is quite common for historical content to be split at certain cutoff points into two or more articles, and that is all that I am proposing here. GreekApple123 (talk) 16:55, 3 May 2025 (UTC)

:::That's your opinion. I personally have difficulty taking seriously this attempt at gatekeeping copypasted content while seemingly displaying no interest about the cohesiveness (and overall purpose) of the original article.--Asqueladd (talk) 16:43, 3 May 2025 (UTC)

::::Do you really think the cohesiveness and overall purpose of this article depend on covering events from before the 20th century? GreekApple123 (talk) 17:06, 3 May 2025 (UTC)