The Spanish case shows how tricky it is to sell your gold. Suddenly other countries found out that Spain had money from liquidating its gold and milked it dry.

Given Spain’s history it is incredible that the gold collected over centuries was spent in a few years.

The wiki article is very carefully tip toeing that there is no evidence that the Soviets defrauded or abused the Spanish, but it is hard to believe that 72% of the world’s gold reserves were visibly spent in a few years.

I did not investigate further but I understood the documents are not completely public, and my conspiracy hat tells me that is because it is a national humiliation.