Franco’s Internationalists

Tainted by its close association with the Axis powers, Spain was diplomatically and politically isolated after 1945. Until the late 1950s, this meant exclusion from the principal international bodies created in the post-war era and from the networks of commercial, financial, cultural and scientific co-operation that they helped sustain. The response of the Franco regime was to embrace its separateness domestically through policies of self-sufficiency while simultaneously seeking to forge links with the outside world and to find acceptance within the new global order. In this carefully researched and eloquently argued study, David Brydan examines the roles played in this search for international legitimacy by experts in public health, medicine and social insurance. The message these professionals promoted was that, despite the repressive realities of life in Spain, Francoist governments were still committed to social improvement and social justice—albeit on terms that reflected the authoritarian and Catholic values of the regime they served. The links these experts subsequently forged with international organisations and networks of fellow professionals exploited the shared bonds of technical knowledge and common humanitarian ideals while subtly promoting the idea that Franco’s Spain should be accepted as part of the international order. As this book shows, while this approach had its limits, it also met with considerable success—most particularly in Spain’s admittance to the World Health Organisation in 1951, which then provided a bridge into a range of other UN bodies such as UNESCO and UNICEF

Legitimacy · Political science · Sociology · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · Law