The support of artists and intellectuals for the Spanish Republic, both in Spain and throughout the Western world, is comparatively well known and frequently publicized outside Spain. Much less known are the cultural support the Franco regime received from a somewhat smaller portion of the Spanish intelligentsia and the regime’s counterrevolutionary cultural program, which it hoped to project more broadly across the Luso-Hispanic world. The Franco dictatorship’s original goal was not merely to defeat the Left militarily and politically but to carry out a thorough cultural and religious counterrevolution, restoring the primacy of Catholicism and traditional values. This thoroughly researched dissertation by Lorenzo Delgado Gómez-Escalonilla does not seek to examine the substance of that policy in any detail, but simply to study its relationship to foreign policy and to describe the concrete measures undertaken to further cultural activity abroad during el primer franquismo, or approximately the first decade of the Franco regime.
Delgado begins by describing the evolution of official Spanish cultural policy abroad during the latter years of the monarchy and under the Republic before the civil war of 1936. He then turns to the development of the Franco regime’s policies in this regard during the war years, finding the early measures limited and comparatively ineffective, chiefly because of the absence of resources. An effort was made to broaden the government’s program after the end of the civil war, giving primary attention to western and central Europe and Latin America (particularly Argentina, Brazil, and, to some extent, Chile), while lesser attention was paid to Morocco and the Islamic world. In the Western Hemisphere, Spanish cultural activity was attuned to the regime’s right-wing theories of neotraditional “Hispanidad” and was anti-North American in emphasis. Resources nonetheless remained limited, more than a little internal bureaucratic conflict took place, and the general achievements were not impressive.
A major change developed in 1943-44, when it became apparent that the Axis powers were losing World War II and the regime would require redefinition and metamorphosis. Ambitions for a rightist cultural hegemony in Latin America were abandoned in favor of a more cooperative version of “Hispanidad” that now emphasized good relations with the United States, and cultural activity received greater priority in foreign policy than ever before.
There are no major surprises here, and this lengthy account ends soon after the conclusion of World War II, well before the new cultural offensive was fully played out. The study is well researched in official primary sources and thoroughly grounded in the now-extensive secondary literature. Though occasionally sardonic, the text is objective and reliable, providing the first detailed account of the evolution of official Spanish cultural policy abroad during the first half of the twentieth century.
