Abstract
Spain’s transition from dictatorship to democracy in the mid-to late 1970s was a momentous event—for Spain, for Europe, and indeed even on a global scale, as it offered a dramatic demonstration that an authoritarian regime could relinquish the reins of power relatively peacefully with little subsequent polítical upheaval and violence. To many scholars and practitioners of “nation branding,” post-Franco era democratization has meant something more: the fundamental “rebranding” of Spain, the construction of an entirely new set of externally directed positive images and associations with concomitant salutary effects on Spain’s soft power, the success of which offers a role model for other states seeking to rebrand themselves. As the communications scholar Melissa Aronczyk has put it in her recent book Branding the Nation: The Global Business of National Identity, “Spain is considered the original success story of nation branding, and until recently, most countries contemplating the process looked to Spain as proof that it works.” Citing the justly lauded “Sol” tourism logo illustration devised in 1983 by Joan Miró, one of Spain’s greatest twentieth-century artists, at the request of the recently installed Socialist government, Aronczyk states,
The logo and the impact it came to have on the international imagination are widely considered to have been instrumental in the ‘repositioning’ of [Spain]. Once an impoverished and isolated nation emerging from dictatorship, the country now put forward an image of an effective democracy and a cultural and cosmopolitan destination. Indeed, the logo was seen to symbolize Spain’s entry into modernity.1
This chapter is adapted from Neal M. Rosendorf, Franco Sells Spain to America: Hollywood, Tourism and Public Relations as Postwar Spanish Soft Power, Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan Press, 2014.
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Notes
Melissa Aronczyk, Branding the Nation: The Global Business of National Identity, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2013, pp. 34–35.
Paul Preston, Franco: A Biography, New York: Basic Books, 1994, p. 522.
See, for example, Joaquim da Costa Leite, “Neutrality by Agreement: Portugal and the British Alliance in World War II,” American University International Law Review, vol. 14, no. 1 (1998);
Christian Leitz, Sympathy for the Devil: Neutral Europe and Nazi Germany in World War II, New York: New York University Press, 2001, chapter 6.
Letter from President Roosevelt to US Ambassador Norman Armour in Spain, March 10, 1945, quoted in E. Ralph Perkins (ed.), Foreign Relations of the United States [FRUS] 1945, vol. V, Europe, Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1967, p. 667.
Stanton Griffis, Lying in State, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1952, p. 268;
Harry S. Truman, Talking with Harry, Ralph E. Weber (ed.), Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2001, pp. 154 and 250;
Robert H. Ferrell, Harry S. Truman: A Life, Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1994, p. 47.
Gallup Poll on US public attitudes toward Spain, August 15, 1945, in George H. Gallup, The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion 1935–1971, New York: Random House, 1972, pp. 519–520.
For an overview of Spain’s immediate postwar predicament, see Florentino Portero, Franco Aislado: La Cuestión española (1945–1950), Madrid: Editorial Aguilar, 1989.
On the Madrid Pact see, for example, Theodore J. Lowi, “Bases in Spain,” in Harold Stein (ed.), American Civil-Military Decisions: A Book of Case Studies, Birmingham: University of Alabama Press, 1963, passim;
Carlos Collardo Seidel, “U.S. Bases in Spain in the 1950s,” in Simon W. Duke and Wolfgang Krieger (eds.), U.S. Military Forces in Europe: The Early Years, 1945–1910, Boulder: Westview Press, 1993, passim;
Boris N. Liedtke, Embracing a Dictatorship: US Relations with Spain, 1945–53, Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan Press, 1998, chapters 6–14;
Angel Viñas, En las Garras del Águila: Los Pactos con Estados Unidos, de Francisco Franco a Felipe González (1945–1995), Barcelona: Critica, 2003, pp. 110–260;
Rosa Pardo Sanz, “US Bases in Spain since 1953,” in Luis Rodrigues and Sergey Glebov (eds.), Military Bases: Historical Perspectives, Contemporary Challenges, Amsterdam: IOS Press, 2009, pp. 56–61.
Benjamin Welles, Spain: The Gentle Anarchy, New York: Praeger, 1965, pp. 233 and 293.
Sasha D. Pack, Tourism and Dictatorship: Europe’s Peaceful Invasion of Franco Spain, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
Aurora Bosch and M. Fernanda del Rincón, “Dreams in a Dictatorship: Hollywood and Franco’s Spain, 1939–1956,” in Reinhold Wagnleitner and Elaine Tyler May (eds.), “Here, There and Everywhere”: The Foreign Politics of American Popular Culture, Hanover, NH, and London: University Press of New England, 2000, p. 100.
For a detailed examination of the Bronston-Franco dictatorship connection, see Neal M. Rosendorf, “Hollywood, Tourism and Dictatorship: Samuel Bronston’s Special Relationship with the Franco Regime, 1957–1973,” in Kenneth A. Osgood and Brian C. Etheridge (eds.), The United States and Public Diplomacy: New Directions in Cultural and International History, Leiden and Boston: Martínus Nijhoff 2010.
On newsletters as an integral element of public relations strategy, see William Ryan and Theodore Conover, Graphic Communications Today, 4th ed., Clifton Park, NY: Delmar Learning/Thomson, 2004, chapter 11;
Barbara Diggs-Brown, Strategic Public Relations: An Audience-Centered Approach, Boston: Cengage/Wadsworth, 2011, pp. 290–292.
Will Straw, “Tabloid Expo,” in Rhona Richman Kenneally and Johanne Sloan (eds.), Expo 67: Not Just A Souvenir, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2010, pp. 222–223.
J. Ramirez de Lucas, “‘La Semana de España’ en Nueva York,” ABC (Madrid), 1964, at ABCH.
Memorandum of conversation, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Francisco Franco, Madrid, 12/22/59, doc. 318 in Ronald D. Landa et al. (eds.), Foreign Relations of the United States [FRUS], 1958–1960, vol. VII, part II, Western Europe, online at http://history.state.gOv/historicaldocuments/frusl958–60v07p2/d318#fn2; Benjamin Welles, Spain: The Gentle Anarchy, pp. 174–175.
Alberto de la Hera and Rosa María Martínez de Codes (eds.), Spanish Legislation on Religious Affairs, Madrid: Ministerio dejusticia, Centro de Publicaciones, 1998, parts I–II passim.
Gabriel Tortella, “Spanish Banking History, 1782 to the Present,” in Manfred Pohl and Sabine Freitag (eds.), Handbook on the History of European Banks, Aldershot, Hants, UK: Edward Elgar, 1994, p. 872.
Victor M. Pérez-Díaz, The Return of Civil Society: The Emergence of Democratic Spain, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993, pp. 167–69;
Richard Gunther, Jose R. Monteró and Juan Botella, Democracy in Modern Spain, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004, p. 161;
Adrian Shubert, A Social History of Modern Spain, Oxford: Routledge, 1992, p. 236.
José Amodia, Franco’s Political Legacies, London: Penguin, 1976, p. 204, quoted in Omar G. Encarnación, “Spain After Franco: Lessons in Democratization,” World Policy Journal, winter 2001/2002, p. 38.
Omar G. Encarnación, Spanish Politics: Democracy After Dictatorship, Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2008, passim.
Sima Lieberman, Growth and Crisis in the Spanish Economy 1940–93, London: Routledge, 1995, chapters 3–5.
For a recent examination of Spanish cultural as well as socioeconomic and infra-structural advancements in the latter part of the Franco era, see Jeremy Treglown, Franco’s Crypt: Spanish Culture and Memory Since 1936, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013, esp. chapters 3, 5, 7–8.
Fiona Gilmore, “A Country—Can It Be Repositioned? Spain—The Success Story of Country Branding,” Journal of Brand Management, vol. 9, nos. 4–5 (April 2002).
see as well Wally Olins, Trading Identities: Why Countries and Companies Are Taking On Each Others’ Roles, London: Foreign Policy Centre, 1999.
Keith Dinnie, Nation Branding: Concepts, Issues Practice, Oxford: Butterworth and Heinemann, 2007, p. 29;
John A. Queich and Katherine E. Jocz, Greater Good: How Good Marketing Makes for Better Democracy, Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business Press, 2007, p. 308 n. 9;
See, e.g., Melissa Aroncyzk, Branding the Nation, as well as her earlier chapter “New and Improved Nations: Branding Identity,” in Craig Calhoun and Richard Sennett (eds.), Practicing Culture, Oxford: Routledge, 2007, pp. 107–109;
Teemu Moilanen and Seppo Rainisto, How to Brand Nations, Cities and Destinations: A Planning Book For Place Branding, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, pp. 72–73;
Vesna Damnjanović, Milena Kravic, and Tarek Abdul Razek, “Tourism Branding Strategy of the Mediterranean Region,” International Journal of Euro-Mediterranean Studies, vol. 2, no. 1 (2009), p. 105;
Thi Lan Huong Bui and Gerald S. A Perez, “Destination Branding: The Comparative Case Study of Guam and Vietnam,” Journal of International Business Research, vol. 9, no. 2 (2010), p. 95;
Hanan Hazime, “From City Branding to e-Brands in Developing Countries: An Approach to Qatar and Abu Dhabi,” African Journal of Business Management, vol. 5, no. 12 (June, 2011), pp. 4734–4735;
and perhaps most reflective of Gilmore’s pervasiveness in its oddity, Robert A. Saunders, The Many Faces of Sacha Baron Cohen: Politics, Parody, and the Battle Over Borat, Plymouth, UK: Lexington books, 2008, pp. 115 and 172.
Ying Fan, “Branding the Nation: What Is Being Branded?” Journal of Vacation Marketing, vol. 12, no. 1 (Jan. 2006), p. 7, online at www.commlex.com/kaneva/YingFan.pdf.
Simon Anhalt, “Public Diplomacy and Place Branding: Where’s the Link?” Place Branding, vol. 2, no. 4 (2006), p. 272.
Sharon J. Kirsch, Present Tense, vol. 2, no. 1 (2011), passim, at http://www.presenttensejournal.org/volume-2/pr-guns-for-hire-the-specter-of-edward-bernays-in-gadhafi%E2%80%99s-libya/;
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Rosendorf, N.M. (2015). Spain’s First “Re-Branding Effort” in the Postwar Franco Era. 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_7
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