Modernizing a Friendly Tyrant: US Public Diplomacy and Sociopolitical Change in Francoist Spain

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.