Abstract
The United States’ attitude toward the Franco regime gradually shifted, from rejection and impelling of the international condemnation of the Spanish dictatorship during the immediate post-World War II period, to a rather wary acceptance. As the United States’ differences from the Soviet Union began being accentuated, some American policymakers—especially in the Pentagon—began to appreciate the value of the strategic enclave in the Iberian Peninsula and the dictatorship’s anticommunism. Thus, the gradual advance toward the Cold War facilitated the creation of closer ties—which only months before would have seemed totally contra natura—between the democratic regime in Washington and the Franco dictatorship. The bilateral accords signed in 1953 allowed the implantation of U.S military bases in Spain in exchange for economic aid, military hardware and technical assistance.1 The goal was to bring Spain in to the security system constructed in Europe to serve as a bulwark against any possible communist offensive. The Spanish authorities agreed to this foreign presence in exchange for international legitimization and financing for their crippled economy. They even went so far as to fantasize that the American aid would be the equivalent of what the Marshall Plan was for other European countries. However, neither the timing nor the objectives were equivalent: in the American power’s initial calculations, the aim was neither the modernization of the Iberian country nor a hypothetical democratizing process.
This paper was written in the framework of the research projects “Estados Unidos y la España del desarrollo (1959–1975): diplomacia pública, cambio social y transición política” (Ministry of Science and Innovation, HAR2010–21694), and “Difusión y recepción de la cultura de Estados Unidos en España, 1959–1975” (Franklin Institute-UAH).
Instituto de Historia, CCHS-CSIC.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Angel Viñas, En las garras del águila. Los pactos con Estados Unidos, de Francisco Franco a Felipe González (1945–1995), Barcelona: Critica, 2003.
Daniel Pipes and Adam Garfinkle (eds.), Friendly Tyrants. An American Dilemma, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991;
Adam Garfinkle (ed.), The Devil and Uncle Sam. A User’s Guide to the Friendly Tyrants Dilemma, New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1992.
Pablo León-Aguinaga, Sospechosos habituales. El cine norteamericano, Estados Unidos y la España franquista, 1939–1960, Madrid: CSIC, 2010, pp. 71–202
and “The Trouble with Propaganda: the Second World War, Franco’s Spain, and the Origins of US Post-War Public Diplomacy,” The International History Review no. 2 (2015), pp. 342–365.
Daniel Fernández de Miguel, El enemigo yanqui. Las raices conservadoras del antiamericanismo español, Madrid: Genueve Ediciones, 2011.
Pablo León-Aguinaga, “Los canales de la propaganda norteamericana,” in Ayer, 75 (2009), pp. 97–132 and 133–158;
Pablo León-Aguinaga, “Faith in the USA. El mensaje de la diplomacia pública americana en España, 1948–1960,” in Antonio Niño and José Antonio Montero (eds.), Guerra Fría y Propaganda. Estados Unidos y su cruzada cultural en Europa y America Latina, Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 2012, pp. 155–196 and 197–234.
Dolores Elizalde (eds.), España y Estados Unidos en el siglo XX, Madrid; CSIC, 2005, pp. 207–243, and “Objetivo: atraer a las élites. Los lideres de la vida publica y la política exterior norteamericana en España,” in Guerra Fría, pp. 235–276.
Adoración Álvaro Moya, “Guerra Fría y formación de capital humano durante el franquismo. Un balance sobre el programa estadounidense de ayuda técnica (1953–1963),” Historia del Presente, 17 (2011), pp. 13–25.
Carlos Barrachina, El retorno de los militares a los marteles: militares y cambio político en España (1976–1981), Barcelona: Institut de Ciències Polítiques i Socials, 2002, pp. 15–22.
Lorenzo Delgado Gómez-Escalonilla, Westerly Wind. The Fulbright Program in Spain, Madrid: Comisión Fulbright España-LID Editorial Empresarial-AECID, 2009.
Elena Cavalieri, España y el FMI: la integratión de la economía española en el sistema monetario international, 1943–1959, Madrid: Banco de España, 2014.
Carlos Moya, El poder económico en España, Madrid: Tucar Ediciones, 1975, pp. 123–142 and 218–230;
José Casanova, “Modernización y democratización: reflexiones sobre la transición española a la democracia,” in Teresa Carnero Arbar (ed.), Modernización, desarrollo politico y cambio social, Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1992, pp. 235–276;
Pedro C. González Cuevas, “La derecha tecnocratica,” Historia y Politica, 18 (2007), pp. 23–48;
Antonio Cañellas Mas, Laureano López Rodó. Biografia política de un Ministro de Franco (1920–2000), Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 2011, pp. 112–120 and 152–156.
Nils Gilman, Mandarins of the Future. Modernization Theory in Cold War America, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003;
Michael, E. Latham, Modernization as Ideology: American Social Science and “Nation Building” in the Kennedy Era, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000,
and The Right Kind of Revolution: Modernization, Development, and U.S. Foreign Policy from the Cold War to the Present, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010.
David Engerman, Nils Gilman, Mark H. Haefele, and Michael E. Latham (eds.), Staging Growth: Modernization, Development, and the Global Cold War, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003;
David F. Schmitz, Thank God They’re on Our Side. The United States and Right-Wing Dictatorships, 1921–1965, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999;
David Ekbladh, The Great American Mission: Modernization and the Construction of an American World Order, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009; H-Diplo/ISSF, Roundtable Reviews, vol. III, 4 (2011).
Marc Frey and Sönke Kunkel, “Writing the History of Development: A Review of the Recent Literature,” Contemporary European History, 20 (2011), pp. 215–232.
Amando de Miguel, Reformar la universidad, Barcelona: Euros, 1976, pp. 15–21;
María Jesús Santesmases, “Orígenes internacionales de la política científica,” in Ana Romero de Pablos and María Jesús Santesmases (eds.), Cien años de política científica en España, Bilbao: Fundación BBVA, 2008, pp. 300–302;
Marc Baldó, “La investigación y la enseñanza técnica en el Ministerio de Lora-Tamayo (1962–1968),” in Facultades y Grados. X Congreso Internacional de Historia de las universi-iades hispánicas, Valencia: Universität de Valencia, 2010, vol. I, pp. 239–242 and 253–256.
Luis Sanz Menéndez and Santiago López García, Política tecnológica versus política científica durante el franquismo, Documento de Trabajo 97–01, Madrid: Instituto de Estudios Sociales Avanzados-CSIC, 2001.
José L. García Ruiz, “Estados Unidos y la transformación general de las empresas españolas,” Cuadernos de Historia Contemporánea, 25 (2003), pp. 131–153;
Nuria Puig and Adoración Álvaro, “La guerra fría y los empresarios españoles. La articulación de los inter-eses económicos de Estados Unidos en España, 1950–1975,” Revista de Historia Económica, 22/2 (2004), pp. 387–424.
See Francisco J. Rodríguez Jiménez, ¿ Antídoto contra el antiamericanismo? American Studies en España, 1945–1969, Valencia: PUV, 2010, pp. 185–241
and “¿«Misioneros de la Americanidad»? Promoción y difusión de los American Studies en España, 1969–1975,” Historia del Presente, 17 (2011), pp. 55–69;
Oscar J. Martín García and Francisco J. Rodríguez Jiménez, “¿Seducidos por el inglés? Diplomacia pública angloamericana y difusión de la lengua inglesa en España, 1959–1975,” Historia y Política, 29 (2013), pp. 301–330.
See also Rosa Pardo, “Las relaciones hispano-norteamericanas durante la presidencia de L. B. Johnson: 1964–1968,” Studia Historica. Historia Contemporánea, 22 (2004), pp. 150–169
and David Stiles, “A Fusion Bomb over Andalucía: U.S. Information Policy and the 1966 Palomares Incident,” Journal of Cold War Studies, 8/1 (2006), pp. 49–67.
See Oscar J. Martin García, “Walking on Eggs. La diplomacia pública de los Estados Unidos y la protesta estudiantil en España, 1963–1969,” Historia del Presente, 17 (2011), pp. 27–40
and “A Complicated Mission. The United States and Spanish Students during the Johnson Administration,” Cold War History, 13 (2012/3), pp. 311–329.
Pardo, “Las relaciones,” pp. 169–183 and “Estados Unidos y el tardofranquismo: las relaciones bilaterales durante la presidenza Nixon, 1969–1974,” Historia del Presente, 6 (2005), pp. 14–28;
Charles Powell, El amigo americano. España y Estados Unidos de la dictadura a la democracia, Madrid: Galaxia Gutemberg-Circulo de Lectores, 2011, pp. 52–119.
La education en España. Bases para una política educativa, Madrid: Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia, 1969;
José L. Romero, “Del Libro Bianco a la Ley General de Educación,” en España Perspectiva 1971, Madrid: Guadiana de Publicaciones, 1971, pp. 209–241;
Félix Ortega, “Las ideologias de la reforma educativa de 1970,” Revista de Educación, no. extraordinario (1992), pp. 13–29 and 31–46.
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2015 Francisco J. Rodríguez, Lorenzo Delgado, and Nicholas J. Cull
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Gómez-Escalonilla, L.D. (2015). Modernizing a Friendly Tyrant: US Public Diplomacy and Sociopolitical Change in Francoist Spain. In: Rodríguez Jiménez, F.J., Gómez-Escalonilla, L.D., Cull, N.J. (eds) US Public Diplomacy and Democratization in Spain. Palgrave Macmillan Series in Global Public Diplomacy. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137461452_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137461452_4
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-57997-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-46145-2
eBook Packages: Palgrave Political Science CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)