Selling a Dictatorship on the Stage: “Festivales de España” as a Tool of Spanish Public Diplomacy during the 1960s and 1970s (original) (raw)

2019, Óscar J. MARTÍN GARCÍA y Rósa MAGNÚSDÓTTIR (eds.): Machineries of Persuasion. European Soft Power and Public Diplomacy during the Cold War, Berlin/Boston, De Gruyter, 2019, pp. 39-60

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110560510-003

The Planes Nacionales de Festivales de España (National Plans of the Spanish Festivals, FDE) were a relevant tool of the Spanish public diplomacy during General Franco’s dictatorship and in the years of transition to a democracy. Created in 1954 by the Spanish government, they consisted in three to four-month campaigns per year, running normally from May to September, which included a wide range of dance, music, and theatre shows. As a high-level State policy, the FE enjoyed strong official support —both in terms of funding and of political endorsement—, wide domestic and international diffusion, and allegedly a high level of success. That was the case during the 1960s, when the cooperation and networking of top politicians from the Spanish Ministry of Information and Tourism such as Manuel Fraga, Carlos Robles and Enrique de la Hoz resulted in both a qualitative and a qualitative increase of the FE. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) and the Ministry of National Education (MNE) were also key actors in this political undertaking. In 1963 for instance 45 FE were celebrated and in 1969 their number amounted to 83, with about 800 different shows in 1964, whereas their budgets rose from 4-5 million pesetas in the 1950s to 100 million per year in the 1960s. The expansion of the FE’s target audience may be considered as one of its most important pretended achievements. Not only did the FE try to bring supposedly educated art forms to the lower strata of the Spanish society —as it was the case in other contemporary European dictatorships—, but they also intended to boost the international acceptance of the dictatorship and the touristic attraction of Spain, reflecting the priorities of the Spanish foreign policy in the 1960s and 1970s, by promoting Spanish performing arts abroad. The aim of this paper is to analyze the FE campaigns as a tool of “soft power” displayed by the Spanish public diplomacy in order to affect both domestic and foreign audiences visually and emotionally for the sake of Francoist political legitimacy and booming economy. Special attention will be given to some state-driven musical, theatre and dance embassies to countries such as the USA, USSR or West Germany, with which the dictatorship pretended to foster a gentle image in the central decades of the Cold War. The reconstruction of this cultural machinery, the cooperation with unofficial actors —such as impresarios or private travel agencies—, the contradictions within the notion of “popular culture” used by the dictatorship, and the re-appropriation of the FE by the Spanish budding democracy since 1975 will also be discussed in this contribution.