During the spanish civil war, we all know that each side had international support. While USSR supported republicans, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany supported nationalists. Why UK and France, but especially France, preferred to have one more fascist state in Europe and allowed itself to be surrounded almost entirely by fascist states while it had a important communist influence in its domestic policies? Was this played a significant role (in terms of separation of its forces) in defeat of France in the WWII?
France hasn't preferred a nationalist rebels (fascists, monarchists and reactionary Catholics) to the Spanish Republic. On the contrary, in the beginning, France and its Popular Front govt feared of being surrounded by fascists from the all sides. They initially moved to support the republic, but when they made to Britain, they faced with British conservative govt being against any support to Spanish republicans. Basically, you see Blum being determined to send aid to Republic by 22nd of July, visit to Britain in 22 and 23 July, setting an arms embargo on Spanish Republic by 25th meaning reversal of the previous policy, and proposing a non-intervention pact on 8th of August. Blum also feared his alliance with centrist radicals might be disturbed even though rest of the coalition sure wanted to help Spanish republicans, and he wasn't able to split with Britain. Whether if Britain or France initiated the agreement is disputed, but of course non-intervention pact hadn't been followed by Hitler, fascist Italy or Portugal, and even though everyone knew what's going on, Committee for Non-Intervention hadn't found anything on it and Britain denied any knowledge on these interventions by Hitler and Mussolini. By the 1st of August, when the proposal for the non-intervention agreement was initiated, increased military aid by Germany and Italy was pretty well known even though Hitler was saying Germany is not and will not be aiding the right wing military uprising.