Abstract
From the early 1950s to the mid-1960s, the main periodical publication of the US Information Service (USIS) in Spain contained a permanent section of letters to the editor.2 Many of the letters showed the interest, respect, and even admiration with which many Spaniards perceived the United States. Many others did not. Criticism and even contempt toward specific dimensions of the American reality and US foreign policy were frequently displayed. Aspects most commonly derided ranged from the supposed weakness of American anticom-munism to Washington’s hidden motives in its relations with Third World and Latin American countries.3 The unbalanced nature of Cold War Spanish-American relations was often criticized too.4 Likewise, some letters openly questioned both the sincerity of America’s democratic ideals and the viability of its polítical and economic institutions. Nonetheless, the USIS chose to publish and answer some of them—like the example reproduced above. Such a transparent attitude was intended as a message in itself5 and demonstrated one of the key values the United States stood for: constructive dialogue and openness. Both were fundamental elements for the sort of “ideal” liberal democracy represented by the United States. And both were, together with the presentation of the American economic model and democratic form of government, ever present in the informational output and cultural deployment of US Public Diplomacy in the Spain of Dictator General Francisco Franco.6
I don’t think you’re very nice, because your democracy and your ideals are always subject to the comfort of the various dictators you have an understanding with.
We do not know which dictators our correspondent means. Whilst it is true that the United States, like other countries, maintain diplomatic relations with other countries whose ideologies they reject, this does not mean, in any way, that they approve of them, or much less support them.
Fetter to the publisher and response from the editor, Atlantico, 26 (January 1964), p. 2.1
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Notes
See Julián Marías, “Spain,” in Franz M. Joseph (ed.), As Others See Us, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959, pp. 25–56;
Manuel Vazquez Montalván, La penetración Americana en España, Madrid: Cuadernos para el Dialogo, 1974;
and Fernández, Daniel, El enemigo Yankee. Las raices conservadoras del antiamericanismo español, Zaragoza: Genueve, 2012.
On Cold War Spanish-American relations, see Ángel Viñas, En lasgarras del águila. Los pactos con Estados Unidos. De Francisco Franco a Felipe González (1945–1995), Barcelona: Cátedra, 2003;
Lorenzo Delgado and M. D. Elizalde (eds.), España y Estados Unidos en el siglo XX, Madrid: CSIC, 2005;
and Charles Powell, El amigo americano. España y Estados Unidos: de la democracia a la dictadura, Madrid: Galaxia Gutenberg, 2012.
On the deployment of US propaganda and public diplomacy in Cold War Spain, see Lorenzo Delgado, “La maquinaria de la persuasión. Política informativa y cultural de los Estados Unidos hacia España,” Ayer, no. 75 (2009), pp. 97–132;
Lorenzo Delgado, Westerly Wind. The Fulhight Program in Spain, Madrid: LID, 2009;
Pablo León-Aguinaga, “Los canales de la propaganda norteamericana en España,” Ayer, no. 75 (2009), pp. 133–158;
and Pablo León-Aguinaga, “Faith in the USA. El mensaje de la diplomacia pública americana en España, 1948–1960,” in Antonio Niño and José A. Montero (eds.), Guerra Fría y propaganda. Estados Unidos y su cruzada cultural en Europa y América Latina, Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 2012, pp. 197–234.
For an in-depth account of the internecine conflict between Ambassador Hayes and the Overseas Branch of the OWI, see Pablo León-Aguinaga, “The Trouble with Propaganda: the Second World War, Franco’s Spain, and the Origins of US Post-War Public Diplomacy,” International History Review, no. 2 (2015), pp. 342–365.
On the ideological nature of the Francoist Regime, see Ismael Saz, Fascismo y franquismo, Valencia: PUV, 2004.
On the relevance of the economic component of the agreements for Spain, see Óscar Calvo, “Neither a Carrot nor a Stick: American Foreign Aid and Economic Policymaking in Spain during the 1950s,” Diplomatic History, no. 3 (2006), pp. 409–438.
Pablo León-Aguinaga, “Los canales de la propaganda norteamericana en España, 1945–1960,” Ayer, no. 75 (2009), p. 137.
See Pablo Martin Acena and Elena Martinez Ruiz, “The Golden Age of Spanish Capitalism: Economic Growth without Polítical Freedom,” in Nigel Townson (ed.), Spain Transformed. The Late Franco Dictatorship, 1959–1975, London and New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010, pp. 30–47.
See Óscar J. Martin García, “A Complicated Mission: The United States and Spanish Students during the Johnson Administration,” Cold War History, no. 12 (2012), pp. 7–8.
See Nicholas Cull, The Cold War and the United States Information Agency. American Propaganda and Public Diplomacy, 1945–1989, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008, pp. 278–279.
On the central importance of modernization and development in US Cold War foreign policy, see David C. Engerman, “Ideology and the Origins of the Cold War,” in Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad (eds.), Cambridge History of the Cold War. Volume I. Origins, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011, pp. 20–43.
For a recent review on the subject, see Daniel Immerwahr, “Modernization and Development in U.S. Foreign Relations,” Passport, no. 2 (2012), pp. 23–25.
On French policies concerning the modernization of Francoist Spain, see Esther Sánchez, Rumbo al sur. Francia y la España del desarrollo, 1958–1969, Madrid: CSIC, 2006.
On Germany and Britain, see Walther L. Bernecker, “Alemania ante el cambio de régimen en España,” in Óscar Martín García and Manuel Ortiz Heras (eds.), Claves internacionales de la transición española, Madrid: Los Libros de la Cataráta, 2010, pp. 174–197,
Antonio Muñoz, El amigo alemán. El SPD y el PSOE de la dictadura a la democracia, Madrid: RBA, 2012,
and Óscar J. Martín García, “Emisarios de la moderación: la diplomacia pública británica ante el fin de las dictaduras ibéricas,” Hispania, no. 242 (2012), pp. 789–816.
On the activities of the Ford Foundation in Spain, see Fabiola de Santisteban, “El desembarco de la Fundación Ford en España,” Ayer, no. 75 (2012), pp. 159–191
and Óscar J. Martín García and Francisco J. Rodríguez, “¿Seducidos por el inglés? Diplomacia pública angloamericana y difusión de la lengua inglesa en España, 1959–75,” Historia y Política, no. 29 (2013), pp. 312–315.
Kenneth Osgood, Total Cold War. Eisenhower’s Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad, Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2008.
See also Adoración Alvaro, “Guerra Fría y for-mación de capital humano durante el franquismo. Un balance sobre el programa estadounidense de ayuda técnica (1953–1963),” Historia del Presente, no. 17 (2011), pp. 13–25.
On Civil Rights and US Cold War Public Diplomacy, see for example Mary L. Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000
and Laura Belmonte, Selling the American Way. U.S. Propaganda and the Cold War, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2008.
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© 2015 Francisco J. Rodríguez, Lorenzo Delgado, and Nicholas J. Cull
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León-Aguinaga, P. (2015). US Public Diplomacy and Democracy Promotion in Authoritarian Spain: Approaches, Themes, and Messages. 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_5
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