Following the fall of the Republic in April 1939, the president of Spain, Manuel Azaña and the prime minister, Juan Negrín, went into exile in France.

Following the occupation of France, the government was reconstituted in Mexico, which under the left-wing president Lázaro Cárdenas continued to recognise the Republic, although Negrín spent the war years in London.

Until 1945, the exiled Republicans had high hopes that at the end of World War II in Europe, Franco's regime would be removed from power by the victorious Allies and that they would be able to return to Spain.

In the immediate postwar period, it had diplomatic relations with Mexico, Panama, Guatemala, Venezuela, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Romania, and Albania,[1] but the United States, the United Kingdom, France and the Soviet Union did not recognise it.

In a gesture of reconciliation, Juan Carlos received the exiled leaders at a ceremony in Madrid.