Conclusion: Success, Inertia, Death, Democracy and a Fallacy

Abstract

The evolution and arc of the Franco regime’s US reputational outreach from its modest beginnings months after World War II’s end to the multi-faceted, interlocking program of the 1960s amounted to a remarkable success story for the Spanish dictatorship. By the metrics of efficacy employed at the time—for example, the dramatically rising number of US tourists, the quantity and in some cases specific topics of Hollywood films produced in Spain, the torrent of paid and earned media coverage generated by carefully orchestrated public relations efforts, the millions of visitors at the Spanish pavilions at US world’s fairs—the regime had managed an extraordinary feat for a country starting out with a severe reputational deficit in the US. Spain became one of the prime overseas destinations from the 1950s on for American tourists, who unlike low-spending European “sun-and-fun” tourists visited Spain’s cities and towns, absorbed Spanish history, culture and contemporary life, and were thus prime targets for an authoritarian government looking to disabuse them of pre-existing negative attitudes. Hollywood and its attendant publicity machine offered a slew of positive images of Spain past and present, both via motion pictures and the glamor that surrounded the production process. The Franco regime’s increasingly accomplished employment of public relations approaches generated reams of equally positive coverage and developed high-prestige relationships in the US, while the dictatorship’s eventual embrace of religious minority rights neutralized a long and highly effective series of attacks emanating from the American secular and religious press.