On 1 November 1940 the British war cabinet debated an aspect of their country's relations with Franco's Spain, but the discussion proved heated enough to puzzle two of the more politically dispassionate figures present. Britain's foreign secretary, Lord Halifax, was moved to comment in his diary on the fact that only talk of Spain seemed capable of upsetting the cosy consensus among members of the British Conservative, Labour and Liberal parties on the constraints governing political debate. Halifax noted that once a Spanish topic obtruded into a British political argument the exchanges rapidly reached fever pitch. Sir Alexander Cadogan, the permanent under-secretary of state at the Foreign Office, had also been present at the cabinet session. His private reaction to what he termed that ‘frightful discussion’ was similar to his minister's: ‘Any Spanish topic makes the politicians go all hay-wire and Attlee (the Labour party leader and lord privy seal), otherwise a dormouse, becomes like a rabid rabbit. Why?’ The purpose of this essay is to answer Cadogan's question, and to do so by concentrating on the particular Spanish problem that had been the subject of the British war cabinet's deliberations on 1 November 1940: namely, whether Dr Juan Negrín López should be allowed to continue enjoying political asylum in Britain when his presence there caused its government such ‘great embarrassment’.