In his book " The House of Churchill" Don Masters discusses some of the issues Churchill was having with rising production costs & attempting to survive in the 1970's.
Nothing is mentioned re. outsourcing production to Spain but Masters discusses several attempts to produce boxlock action bodies using investment casting rather than forgings in an attempt to reduce production costs. One of the aborted attempts involved a French company (Preciast S.A.) & this may be where questions re. non British parts arise.
Long story short, some boxlocks were produced in the mid to late 70's using investment cast action bodies. It was reported that the investment cast parts were difficult to machine & color case & unpopular with the gunmakers.
As Le Fusil mentioned, some of the guns produced in the last few years before production ended were not of the quality of those produced earlier. A friend of mine had a pair of very late production Premiere 12 bores that were decent guns but lacked in fit & finish when compared to earlier production guns.
