You skipped history classes too. Spain and Portugal were led by fascist dictators even though they professed neutrality. Franco accepted Germany's assistance in the Spanish Civil War and Portugal's Salazar supported Franco.
But even though Salazar claimed neutrality, in July 1940 he allowed 2,500 British evacuees from Gibraltar to be shipped to Madeira island. Then later he allowed Brittan to use Lajes Field, Azores (Portuguese Air Base No. 4) to stage air cover for Allied shipping convoys.
Churchill recognized Salazar for his support:
... many MPs had not known that Portugal and England had the oldest operational alliance in the world, the Anglo-Portuguese Treaty of 1373. Churchill ended his speech saying:In spite of all that, Spain and Portugal did not fight against Hitler and their Fascist governments lasted decades after WWII.I take this opportunity of placing on record the appreciation by His Majesty's Government, which I have no doubt is shared by Parliament and the British nation, of the attitude of the Portuguese Government, whose loyalty to their British Ally never wavered in the darkest hours of the war. [8]
So, I say, flip a coin on that map thingy.
Franco gave a great speech after the US reached out during the Cold War (starting with the Korean War); he mentions how only so late did the US see what he opposed in Spain in 1936.
It is shameful that for all the rhetoric, the US and Wstern allies never helped European countries suppress communist revolutions after the intervention in the Russian Civil War. Those communist revolutions produced Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Salazar and the authoritarian regimes that would later ally with the Axis in Eastern Europe. The Axis in Europe was the predecessor of the EU - and Germany still leads it, while England isn’t in it.