Introduction
In 1965 a report produced for President Lyndon B. Johnson noted that ‘demand for the knowledge of English [had] become a worldwide phenomenon’. At that point in time, the report continued, around 900 million people across the world were either learning English or had already done so.Footnote 1 During this same period the Americans and their British ally were embroiled in an ongoing struggle to win hearts and minds in the global battle against Soviet Communism. In that context, the US government viewed the dissemination of the English language as a ‘low-intensity weapon’ with great educational utility because it presented to the rest of the world those aspects of American life which facilitated a sympathetic understanding of US policies. English was also seen as an effective weapon with which the United States could combat stereotypes about its supposed cultural mediocrity and its capacity to be a world leader. The British, for their part, cited convincing economic reasons to extend the use of their language beyond their borders. The Foreign Office believed that the dissemination of English would help shape public opinion more favourable to the United Kingdom's interests abroad. In addition, it provided a ‘natural and direct’ medium for the development of personal contacts with the rising educated classes in other countries – a group from which it was likely that future leaders would emerge.Footnote 2
This article focuses on a case study: the cultural and educational diplomacy employed by the United States and United Kingdom during the 1960s and 1970s to increase the presence of the English language in Spain. During this period Spain was of high geostrategic value in the context of the Cold War. The growing strategic importance of Spain as a bulwark against Soviet Communism had led the United States to sign the 1953 Mutual Defence Agreement with the Franco regime. This military pact permitted the establishment of US military bases on Spanish soil, turning the Francoist dictatorship into an important US ally against Soviet Communism. US military planners viewed Spain as an indispensable stronghold in the Mediterranean operational area and a bridge between North Africa and Europe. Moreover, Spanish territory flanked both sides of the British colony of Gibraltar, considered by officials in London and Washington as a ‘redoubt and a base of manoeuvre for the whole European theatre of operations'.Footnote 3 However, US support for the Franco regime and British dominion in Gibraltar gave rise – albeit for different reasons – to growing resentment among broad sectors of the Spanish public.
During the 1960s it was clear that if measures were not put in place to mitigate anti-American and anti-British sentiment, preparations for a gradual post-authoritarian succession that would favour Western interests once Franco died could be compromised.Footnote 4 Moreover, from the late 1960s onwards southern Europe became an area of increasing bipolar rivalry in strategic, political and economic terms. The increasing naval presence of the USSR in the Mediterranean, the rise of communist parties in Italy and France, the intense dispute between Turkey and Greece, the Yom Kippur War and the energy crisis shifted much of the socio-political instability that détente in central Europe had resolved to southern Europe instead. All these factors also projected considerable uncertainty onto the possible end of the Spanish dictatorship.Footnote 5
The United States and United Kingdom faced fundamentally the same dilemma of how the growing rejection of an Anglo-American presence in Spain could be prevented from harming the geostrategic objectives of these two governments when regime change eventually came about. How could the United States and United Kingdom reconcile their short-term defensive priorities with their longer-term preparations for a future transition in Spain? This was by no means an easy task; rather it required the striking of a delicate balance between immediate geopolitical objectives and anticipation of events to come. In both Washington and London cultural diplomacy was assigned an essential role in this difficult mission. The flexible and subtle nature of some of its tools, such as English teaching, was perfectly suited to the task at hand. Promotion of the English language was viewed as an effective means to seduce the political and economic elites. Understanding how the promotion of the English language in Spain worked in detail casts light on the use of cultural diplomacy to safeguard strategic, economic and political interests in relatively hostile environments.
The atmosphere of bipolar conflict in the 1960s and 1970s reinforced the connection between the propagation of the English language and the safeguarding of the national interests of the English-speaking powers. Both the Americans and the British viewed the promotion of their language as an educational effort, intended to encourage mutual understanding between societies.Footnote 6 Nevertheless, whilst there were definitely magnanimous motives underlying this cultural undertaking, the Cold War leaders also used the teaching of English to achieve their political goals.Footnote 7 These objectives included the fight against Communism and the promotion of ideological affinity between transnational elites. In other words, it was felt in both Washington and London that the expansion of English would help to consolidate cultural unity, which should lend legitimacy to the Western military alliance.
Despite this, the promotion of English did not progress smoothly. Local populations did not always receive British and Americans initiatives to make the English language into a ‘lingua franca’ with enthusiasm. On more than one occasion, defiant local populations gave a very cold welcome to teachers, religious missionaries or Peace Corps volunteers engaged in English teaching activities. Some such cultural ambassadors were even accused of spying for the Central Intelligence Agency.Footnote 8 In Spain, as we shall see later on, British and American cultural centres were denounced as imperialistic Trojan horses and occasionally suffered attacks.
In 2001 Tony Shaw observed a renewed interest in the implications and consequences of the Cold War not only in the typical military or economic spheres but also in the less tangible realm of culture and ideologiesFootnote 9, namely in the area of so-called ‘soft power’.Footnote 10 Shaw noted that virtually everything – from sports to ballet, comics to space travel – took on a political meaning and, therefore, could potentially be used as a tool to both shape a populace at home and engage public opinion abroad.Footnote 11 Since then the body of literature about various aspects of the so-called ‘Cultural Cold War’ has grown significantly.Footnote 12 Yet only a few works (and none to any great length) have focused specifically on the promotion of the English language abroad.Footnote 13
This article attempts to redress this imbalance by focusing on the Spanish case, which demonstrates that, although the teaching of English could not completely counteract the damage done to the American and British image by their foreign policies, it nevertheless did limit the spread of Anglophobia and anti-Americanism in 1970s Spain. The first section of this article analyses the role played by the dissemination of English in safeguarding the economic, political and geo-strategic interests of both Anglo-Saxon powers in Spain, as well as the Spanish authorities' reactions toward those ‘soft power’ initiatives. The second section explores what Anglo-American channels and cooperation plans were used in order to promote their language in Francoist classrooms. Finally, the third section examines US and British assistance in an important reform implemented in the Spanish educational system from 1969 to 1971 – an encouragement expected to serve as an impulse for increasing the presence of the English language in Spain.
English teaching and US/British foreign policy towards Spain
During the Second World War the British and American governments tried to prevent Spain from becoming fully aligned with Germany and Italy. The victory of the Allies over the Axis powers left Franco's Spain as the last surviving fascist dictatorship in Europe.Footnote 14 The outbreak of the Cold War and the need to secure the southern flank of Europe against the Soviet threat led Washington to break with its previous Spanish policy, which had been coordinated with Britain and France, and to spearhead the international rehabilitation of Franco's regime.Footnote 15 This readjustment of US foreign policy toward Spain culminated in 1953 in a military pact which allowed US air and naval bases to be established in the geostrategic enclave of the Iberian Peninsula. From that point on, indeed until the twilight of Franco's dictatorship, Washington's policies toward Spain changed very little. Maintaining good relations with the Spanish dictator so as to ensure political stability and continued access to military was always prioritised.Footnote 16
The international status quo in the Spanish strategic area appeared to be guaranteed as long as Franco remained in power. What, though, would happen when the aging dictator died? Assessments conducted in the late 1950s in preparation for that eventuality identified how US military and economic collaboration with the Spanish dictatorship was alienating the leaders of the democratic opposition, who saw the superpower as a mainstay of the Franco regime.Footnote 17 In subsequent years, the Vietnam War together with US support for Franco seriously damaged the United States' image in the eyes of progressive students, professors, intellectuals, opinion leaders, civil servants, young professionals and labour leaders — the very individuals who were to occupy an important place in the Spain of the future.Footnote 18
In 1959 an inspection report on the US information and cultural services in Spain remarked that English teaching could promote a climate of opinion among Spaniards that was favourable to the continued presence of US military bases. The use of English would help to ‘increase Spaniards' interest’ in US customs and culture, offering Spaniards a more sympathetic knowledge of American society.Footnote 19 In addition, an official communiqué in 1963 pointed out that promoting the language of Mark Twain would help Americans ‘to affiliate [themselves]’ with important groups outside of the authoritarian regime when ‘other methods of contact [were] impossible’. In the case of Spain, the promotion of the English language was understood to be an asset which could resolve the paradox in which US foreign policy was caught: to defend democracy and, at the same time, to ‘work with governments which may not truly represent the will of the people of that country’.Footnote 20
During the 1950s and 1960s the democratically elected governments of developing countries such as Indonesia, Bolivia, Iran, Dominican Republic and Greece had a reputation within the US State Department for political instability and economic backwardness. Rightist dictatorships such as the Franco regime, by contrast, in promoting peaceful capitalist growth and containing communism at the same time, were a useful asset in the Cold War. The United States' need to legitimise politically its alliances with authoritarian states sparked a conceptual turn towards an authoritarian version of modernisation, which served to rationalise the American ‘explicit embrace of military-led regimes as the vanguard of political and economic development’.Footnote 21 American modernisation theorists, who called on authoritarian elites in poor countries to play a central role in the development process, helped to present dictatorships such as Franco's as acceptable anti-communist, technocratic and reliable agents of modernisation which guaranteed the material progress of their people within a framework of social order.Footnote 22
Although they have not been widely examined, education and language were fundamental components of this modernising ideology.Footnote 23 US officials presented English as being ‘the password to modernization’ which developing countries such as Spain were beginning to undergo.Footnote 24 Not unlike the Soviets, who used education to create a ‘new man’, the US government wanted to make the learning of American English the mark of the ‘modern man’, bringing with it a new sense of rationality and efficiency seen as necessary for overcoming underdevelopment.Footnote 25 American Cold War modernisers also perceived Spain as being part of a so-called ‘Global South’, afflicted by a lack of political sophistication which might fuel social instability. Consequently, throughout the 1960s US experts viewed the dissemination of the English language as a tool for transmitting what they saw as ideological moderation, which would help steer Spanish elites toward gradual political and economic liberalisation.
The situation in the United Kingdom was rather different. Its crucial role in establishing the policy of non-intervention in the Spanish Civil War had divided British society like no foreign conflict before. The lasting impact of this discord accounts for Britain's official resistance to the United States’ various attempts to integrate Francoist Spain into NATO during the early 1950s.Footnote 26 However, in subsequent years, the escalating bipolar tension transformed the United Kingdom's policy toward Spain, with defensive priorities overcoming the political distaste attached to dealing with the dictator. Harold Macmillan's Conservative government (1957–1963) endeavoured to construct a friendly relationship with the Franco regime with the aim of keeping the Gibraltar question ‘on ice’. In addition, in an attempt to balance out its disproportionate dependence on the United States, Spain developed closer ties with the European Community, which also paved the way for an improvement in Anglo-Spanish relations. These relations reached their point of greatest cordiality between October 1963 and November 1964, when Alec Douglas-Home – who had previously favoured a pragmatic approach to Franco during his time as Foreign Secretary (1960–1963) – was chosen to succeed Macmillan at the head of the Conservative government. However, the reassertion of Spain's historic claim to Gibraltar reignited diplomatic hostilities which lasted until the end of the 1960s, and which significantly damaged the relationship between London and Madrid.
The ‘massive and costly anti-British propaganda machine’ employed by the dictatorship during 1968 and 1969 harmed the image of the British in the eyes of most influential Spanish public figures. It seemed to British diplomats that, if it were not subtly counteracted, the Anglophobia that had been being stoked since the advent of the Franco regime could stand in the way of Britain's desire to exercise a ‘moderating influence’ on any post-Franco transition.Footnote 27 Although relations between Edward Heath's Conservative government (1970–1974) and Franco were somewhat more cordial than those of the Harold Wilson Labour governments that both preceded and succeeded it (1964–1970 and 1974–1976), British policy towards Spain barely changed from the mid 1960s until Franco's death. Maintaining cordial relations with Spaniards in order to keep the question of Gibraltar on the back burner was a priority for all British governments regardless of their political orientation.Footnote 28
Like Washington, London also placed English teaching at the forefront of their cultural policy, with the aim of neutralising the ‘resentment’ generated by the Gibraltar affair. In 1959 the British Embassy in Madrid felt that the teaching of English would help to overcome the ‘Pyrenean Curtain’ and cultivate Anglophile attitudes in a ‘considerable number of intellectually aware young Spaniards’. London attempted to circumvent difficult relations with Madrid by collaborating in areas where there was less bilateral friction, such as language and education, which it hoped could help improve the UK's image.Footnote 29 With traditional diplomatic channels becoming increasingly blocked as the 1960s progressed, English teaching represented a discreet way of ensuring the general advancement of the United Kingdom in the fields of education and science, while also preparing for ‘the better years that [were] yet to come’ in Spain.Footnote 30
Both the Americans and the British were aware of the fact that English could act as a lever to help create trade opportunities in the international environment of the 1950s to 1970s, in which the cultivation of foreign markets was vital for the Western powers. The promotion of the English language was also used to facilitate the entrance of US capital into peripheral markets like that of Spain, whose pattern of economic growth depended heavily on foreign investment.Footnote 31 The ‘Stabilisation Plan’ inaugurated in 1959 had gradually opened up the Spanish economy to the international market. Hence, the British and Americans, as Spain's main trading partners, used the English language to consolidate the presence of Anglo-American capital in Spain – the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) country with the second highest GDP's increase (outstripped only by Japan) between 1961 and 1973 – and to strengthen Spanish integration into the world economy.Footnote 32
However, the modernisation of Spain required not only Western capital but also scientific advice and the acquisition of foreign technologies. As a US Information Agency (USIA) memorandum written in 1968 remarked, countries such as Spain which were experiencing accelerated economic growth ‘necessarily look[ed] to Western Europe, along with the United States, for infusions of capital and technical aid to supplement their efforts to achieve regional development through self-help’.Footnote 33 This reality made the deeper penetration of the English language beneficial to countries like Spain. In fact, at an Anglo-American meeting held some years before both parties decided to place more emphasis on the teaching of English ‘for essential technical uses as a second language in underdeveloped countries’.Footnote 34 Thus, Anglo-American diplomats attempted to present the spread of English as a mark of their benevolent predisposition to share economic, scientific and educational advances with the Spanish government and to promote wellbeing and openness to the outside world in Spanish society.Footnote 35
During the 1940s and into the 1950s the expansion of English in Spain had been obstructed by the cultural – and sometimes xenophobic – nationalism imposed by the Franco authorities. While the 1953 military pact with the United States helped to soften the official stance towards English, the the doors were not exactly flung wide open: the Spanish authorities continued to be suspicious of foreign cultural manipulation. Nevertheless, they saw particular value in the dissemination of the English language as long as it could contribute to satisfying their own needs in various fields – such as technical assistance and transfers, human capital training or cultural exchanges – which could help to overcome Spain's cultural isolation and stimulate its socio-economic development. In other words, the Spanish government was willing to cooperate with English language programmes because they would help to achieve greater integration into the Western community, promote tourism to British and American citizens to ‘sell’ the image of Francoist Spain abroad, expand and modernise the obsolete Spanish education system and attract foreign investment and scientific and technical assistance.
Spain's use of the teaching of English for its own purposes, as Rosendorf remarks in his study on American tourism, illustrates the ‘negotiated nature of cultural relationships between societies [–] a negotiation that can occur even when there is a seeming cultural power asymmetry’.Footnote 36 Franco's Spain was not simply a pawn of the superpowers. Footnote 37 Spanish authorities retained some power in negotiating over the US and British cultural diplomacy initiatives and were not the passive receivers of ‘cultural imperialism’ as some authors have claimed.Footnote 38 A good example of the dynamics of these mutual interests can be seen in the emerging Spanish technocratic elites. These influential groups, which were close to the pro-American Catholic order Opus Dei, and which were connected to international institutions such as the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), the OECD and the World Bank, viewed English as a conduit to the know-how and rational planning which were so desperately needed for their country's socio-economic development. During the 1960s and early 1970s Spain's education ministers were technocrats who were connected to the international development community and participants in leadership-building exchange programmes in the United States. These ministers introduced obligatory English teaching in Escuelas Técnicas Superiores (technical colleges) in 1963 and promoted the Ley General de Educación (General Education Law) in 1970. There two measures acted as an incentive to increase the presence of the English language in the Spanish education system.Footnote 39
This increased official receptiveness facilitated the signing of two bilateral agreements which drove forward the promulgation of English in Spain. In 1958 the Fulbright Program of educational, cultural and scientific exchanges between the United States and Spain was established. By virtue of this program, new technical-scientific knowledge ‘made in the USA’ reached Spain and so-called ‘American Studies’ began being taught in classrooms.Footnote 40 Along the same lines, in 1965 the Fulbright Commission approved an ambitious plan to establish English departments at a number of Spanish universities.Footnote 41 Beyond facilitating the intake of American English teachers (between 1962 and 1965 Spain was, along with Poland, the European country which received most grant recipients specialising in that language), initiatives such as the Fulbright Program made it possible for recognised Spanish researchers and professors to visit the United States. These academics wished to further their education in the United States and were attracted by the well-deserved prestige of many of the universities in that country. In the 1960s command of English began to be understood as a ‘prestige factor’ and an important resource for professional promotion in Spain and other developing countries. Not by accident, the success of such cultural diplomacy programmes was related to their connection with the particular interests of their participants. Such professional preferences made this language a privileged means of interaction with influential local figures, whom the Americans viewed as qualified interpreters of their message in Spain. US officials used English to seduce the national ‘prime movers’, with the aim of producing a ‘multiplier effect’ in terms of promoting the virtues of the American way of life.Footnote 42
Among the aforementioned elites, Washington devoted special attention to the army. In the 1960s the State Department considered the military elites to be key in guaranteeing the socio-political stability needed for the pro-Western modernisation of underdeveloped countries. This belief led the US Department of Defence to give English classes to around 25,000 military personnel per year – primarily in countries where the United States had military bases, including Spain. Crucially, those officials who went to the United States were there to learn not only technical skills or to improve their English but also to develop a better understanding of their American colleagues, fostering improved communication between the American military contingent and the Spanish personnel on the bases.Footnote 43
Shortly after the Fulbright Program began Spain and the United Kingdom signed a cultural collaboration covenant in July 1960. Under this agreement, both governments undertook to create suitable conditions to promote the study of the language and history of the other country.Footnote 44 On the British side, the organisation in charge of carrying out this task was the British Council (BC), whose main function was to promote greater recognition of British culture abroad. The agreement helped to intensify cultural collaboration between London and Madrid, in spite of the somewhat difficult political circumstances in which the bilateral accords were forged.Footnote 45 However, both the signing of the Anglo-Spanish cultural accord and Spain's participation in the Fulbright Program reflected the dictatorship's desire to use culture and education to facilitate its gradual reintroduction into the international community, while at the same time the Americans and British used linguistic cooperation to defend their respective political interests in the Peninsula.
Actors and channels for the promotion of English in Spain
In 1962 the British and Americans held a number of bilateral meetings with a view to responding in a coordinated manner and on a global scale to the increasing demand for English. Amongst the conclusions drawn from these meetings was the need to enhance official cooperation with independent institutions. This was precisely one of the aims of the English programme developed during the first half of that decade by the Fulbright Commission, the University of Madrid and the Institute of Languages and Linguistics at Georgetown University. On the one hand, initiatives of this sort aimed to forge a connection between the dissemination of English and the vitality and spontaneity of the organisations in American civil society. On the other, they attempted to draw up projects which – in order to be more easily assimilated and more palatable – were connected with the interests of local actors in Spain.
Similarly, the BC organised activities in conjunction with philanthropic foundations in Spain and the United Kingdom (Cañada Blanch, March, Nuffield, Ramsay, Stevenson, etc.), which contributed qualified personnel, specialised knowledge, technical assistance and bureaucratic flexibility from which the official programs were able to benefit. This organisation maintained ‘close relations’ with the private English schools in various cities in Spain, frequently providing them with advice and support. From the 1950s onwards the BC had established official centres devoted to the teaching of English in Santander, Malaga, Murcia and Granada, among other places. Initially the British government made extensive resources available but later left the centres in the hands of private franchisees once they had attained a certain level of operability and financial viability. Thus, it attempted to propagate the English language in a way which appeared not to be connected with the designs of the Foreign Office, so as to avoid accusations of cultural imperialism.Footnote 46
Along the same lines, during the first half of the 1960s two institutions, the National Advisory Council on the Teaching of English as a Foreign Language (NACTEFL) and the Centre for Applied Linguistics (CAL), were founded in the United States. These were two non-governmental agencies whose aim was to coordinate official and private initiatives in the international promotion of English. The CAL was financed by the Ford Foundation, which played an important role in the dissemination of English by producing textbooks, creating cultural centres, training teachers and so on. These and other philanthropic organisations offered ‘an institutional bridge for closer ties between the government and the world of academic linguistics’.Footnote 47 For instance, in December 1965 the Ford Foundation granted $275,000 to Georgetown University to develop the promotion of English in Spain. This project, which ran until 1972, helped purchase English language books, install language labs at various universities, provide grants to students, organise educational exchanges with young teachers and run seminars.
Of particular note in this respect is the conference held in Barcelona in November 1967, organised by the BC and the British Institute in Madrid, along with American, British and Spanish specialists.Footnote 48 This seminar, which was a demonstration of intergovernmental and public-private cooperation, was a real asset in the attempt to silence the claims of cultural manipulation voiced by numerous political actors in Spain. Through events such as this, the British and Americans aimed to lend the appearance of political neutrality to the promotion of their language. With the same goal in mind, the BBC took advantage of its position of leadership ‘of all foreign radio stations’ in Spain and its image of independence to introduce courses to promote the English language into its programming. From 1961 the BBC broadcast programs such as ‘Learn English by Radio’ or ‘Listen and Speak’ on Spanish radio channels (Cadena Ser, Radio Nacional de España, etc.), using local intermediaries to get the message across more easily whilst arousing fewer suspicions on the part of the national audience.Footnote 49 Although it had smaller audiences than the BBC, the Voice of America (the internationally-broadcast radio station that publicised the United States' official viewpoint) incorporated into its programming for Spain certain spots aimed at ‘English learners', such as the ‘News in Special English’ – a news broadcast using ‘a limited vocabulary and slow speech’ – which went on the air in 1963.Footnote 50 The United States also introduced the first English course broadcast by state television in 1963.Footnote 51 Ultimately, both the British and the Americans tried to extend the teaching of English through local channels in order to avoid having the label ‘official Anglo-American’ attached to certain programmes and the Spanish public reject them.
On more than one occasion, however, the BC's ties with the Foreign Office did arouse criticism from sectors of Spanish society. In 1972 there was a bomb attack against the British Institute in Barcelona, which was accused of being an instrument in the service of British government cultural propaganda.Footnote 52 This centre, along with the British Institute and the British School of Madrid, made up the backbone of the BC's work in Spain. While the Institutes in the country's two principal cities were aimed at adolescents, the School in the capital concentrated on the education of very young learners from the middle to upper classes. It worked on the premise that early mastery of the English language among the elites of the future would facilitate the later development of useful commercial contacts between Britain and Spain. However, the financial problems suffered by the School from the beginning of the 1970s hindered its work in this field.Footnote 53
Alongside English classes, the British Institutes hosted initiatives such as the English Teaching Theatre, artistic exhibitions and film screenings (an annual output of 150–200 films between 1971 and 1975). The BC centres also lent and donated cinematographic materials about British topics to Spanish educational centres, which in years such as 1972–73 reached an estimated audience of some 103,000 people.Footnote 54 In addition, the BC's centres in Spain offered a number of libraries which, at their height in 1973, had a membership of nearly 6,000 and contained over 40,000 volumes. With all these activities the BC was attempting to give the United Kingdom a public presence which could dilute its negative reputation after the Gibraltar affair. Moreover, the institution wished to link English teaching with the presentation of the most attractive aspects of British culture and with the United Kingdom's achievements in the scientific and educational fields.Footnote 55
The US cultural centres did not escape the aforementioned unfriendly perception among Spaniards either. The so-called ‘bi-national institutes’ were, particularly from 1968 onwards, the target of criticism from the anti-Franco opposition, as they were perceived as being accomplices in ‘Yankee cultural imperialism’. These centres – located in Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia – concentrated their work on English teaching and the promotion of American culture to a young audience. In addition to English courses they also provided a variety of cultural activities, such as a ‘Movie Club’ and an ‘English Conversation Club’, and organised didactic sessions for Spanish teachers of English or held collective readings of authors from the United States. The aim of all these activities was to present the English language as ‘the key to an enormous treasure of literary and cultural achievements’ and to promote it along with an image of the United States which was friendlier and more connected with the world of culture and art. The purpose was to clean up the American image, eliminating the unfavourable identification with Franco at a domestic level and with the Vietnam War internationally.Footnote 56
Educational reform, English teaching and teacher training
In the 1960s, as Western-style prosperity spread across southern Europe, the out-dated educational structures in countries such as Spain proved incapable of offering the appropriate tools to face the challenge of industrialisation. In the mid-1960s international observers feared that Spain's modernisation might be hampered by its citizens' limited technical training caused by this antiquated education system, amongst other factors. To remedy this situation organisations such as the OECD and UNESCO proposed a restructuring of the educational system which would create the ‘skilled labour’ required for economic development. Accepting these suggestions, the dictatorship undertook a wide-reaching reform of its education system beginning in 1968 – a transformation which was influenced by pedagogical practices imported from abroad.Footnote 57
The Americans and British played an important part in the international guidance required by the Franco regime to modernise Spain's education system. Not without reason, in 1969 American sources viewed the restructuring of Spain's education system as an exceptional opportunity to soothe increasing student radicalisation, ensure stable capitalist growth and influence future generations of Spaniards in line with the United States' long-term political interests. However, the tumult in Spanish universities during the late 1960s led the Anglo-American powers to pursue their goals by more indirect routes. Anglo-American aid was channelled through foundations (including the Ford Foundation and the Nuffield Foundation) and international institutions (UNESCO, the OECD and the World Bank), so as to avoid its rejection by the most politicised parts of the education sector. In doing this, they adapted to the hostile context in Spain by indirect influence. This strategy seemed to yield good results in so far as Spain's educational reform was, according to a 1970 US report, ‘largely based on American models’.Footnote 58
The commitment to educational transformation fitted perfectly with the modernising tendencies of British and American policy toward Spain. Support for social and educational reforms which would facilitate Spain's integration with the West provided a more effective strategy than international hostility to the Franco regime. With this logic in mind, educational reform was presented by the United States and Britain in 1971 as an example of international cooperation which would end ‘Spain's alienation from the general trend in modern Europe’. It was hoped that this demonstration of generosity would be met with ‘reciprocal guarantees’ on the part of the Spaniards. Put differently, British and American diplomats hoped that the educational assistance lent by their experts would result in a ‘considerable expansion’ of English in the Spanish curricula.Footnote 59
Achieving this objective required drawing in those target groups who had a relevant part to play in educational modernisation. Starting in the early 1970s the British began offering English classes to high-level civil servants in the institutions in charge of carrying out the educational reforms, such as the Ministry of Education and Public Administration School, amongst others. For their part, the Americans tried to build relations with professors of pedagogy in the teacher training schools, educational inspectors, technicians in educational organisations and specialists in pre-school education, for example. Continuing with this strategy, the US government persuaded the World Bank to support the establishment of Educational Science Institutes (ESIs) in every Spanish university. In addition, Washington had previously encouraged the participation of the UN's Special Fund by founding, in 1969, the National Research Centre for Educational Development (NRCED) – an agency in charge of teacher training and pedagogical innovation and research.Footnote 60
The British Council also managed to forge collaborative links with these organisations. From 1970 onwards it coordinated various activities both with the NRCED and the ESIs at the Universities of Bilbao, Zaragoza, Madrid and Barcelona, to which the BC offered assistance in the further training of teachers, anchoring of English teaching in primary education, realisation of experimental projects in the field of linguistics and development of content for school books. During the first half of the decade the British and Americans also collaborated with these centres in the organisation of ‘English weeks’, which included seminars, workshops and documentaries about the teaching of the language.Footnote 61
However, Anglo-American cooperation in cultural studies sometimes became competition. The Fulbright Commission sought to challenge the superiority that British Studies enjoyed over American Studies in Spanish curricula by enhancing the American Studies resources that had been available in Spain since 1969. American Studies, however, did not take off for a number of reasons: the substantial weight of Spaniards' persistent anti-Americanism, the lack of generous funding and the resistance to change on the part of the Spanish educational authorities, which often held the prejudice that the ‘Queen's English’ was better than the much maligned American accent.Footnote 62 American culture was progressively, but slowly, gaining more prestige, but the shadow of British cultural superiority remained.
Generally speaking, one of the main obstacles to the spread of English was the insufficient training received by Spanish teachers in this area. In order to deal with this shortcoming, American reports recommended that the training of native English teachers ‘should have high priority in most plans’.Footnote 63 From 1960 onwards the American Studies Institute in Barcelona organised summertime courses on pedagogical methods for English teachers, which included sessions on American literature, art and poetry. During the second half of that decade the Fulbright Commission implemented a training programme for English language teachers in many regions of the country. Similarly conceived were meetings for English teachers financed by the Ford Foundation with the logistical support of the commission.Footnote 64
On the British side, the committee behind the 1960 Anglo-Spanish Cultural Convention also believed it necessary to place more emphasis on the training of teachers than on that of the general public. In 1971 the signature of a bilateral agreement enabled an average of 250 young Spanish teachers per year to spend their holidays in summer schools and touring the United Kingdom. This type of activity was intended to familiarise Spanish teachers with British advances in terms of teaching methods and to create opportunities for professional training for those teachers, which would enable the British Council to cultivate ‘close and valuable contacts’ in the world of Spanish education.Footnote 65 This was a direct attempt to attract professional educators who were viewed as a crucial component in the process of promoting British culture in Spain. Educational activity focused on the people that would have to act ‘like radioactive atoms, producing multiplying effects on the rest of the educational community’.Footnote 66 Ultimately, local teachers enjoyed greater credibility with their compatriots as sources of information about the English-speaking world. Their explanations were not tainted by the legacy of cultural imperialism, which tended to accompany the teachings of British or American natives – particularly when they were in the pay of Washington or London.
Conclusion
To gauge the effectiveness of the various British and US cultural diplomacy measures to encourage the spread of English in Spain during the 1960s and 70s is not an easy task.Footnote 67 Some official reports emphasised success and advancement while others called for more funds or resources, depending on the various contexts. In other words, the need to justify results and resources shaped official accounts of the work undertaken.Footnote 68 That said, the progress of English language dissemination in Spain was especially noticeable in the higher education sector. Of the fourteen universities that existed in Spain in 1963, only Madrid had a solid platform for the teaching of English and of British and American Studies. By contrast, by 1968 English language departments had been opened at the Universities of Barcelona, Valladolid, Zaragoza, Santiago, Seville, La Laguna, Granada, Oviedo and Deusto.Footnote 69
That expansion was related to two factors: firstly the various soft power tactics employed by the United States and United Kingdom to safeguard certain geostrategic, political and economic interests in Spain; and secondly the greater willingness of the Francoist authorities to collaborate in the dissemination of a language which they saw as being an access key for national modernisation. In fact, hand in hand with English, ideas and techniques entered Spain which helped to transform the country's social, economic, scientific and educational structures.
Anglo-American cultural diplomacy and public-private cooperation facilitated the arrival, during the 1960s, of teachers, didactic material and pedagogical methods which increased the language's presence in Spain. Yet, at the start of the decade, English was not the main foreign language taught in Spanish schools. The language of Shakespeare and Mark Twain started out at a clear disadvantage, with social and institutional bases which were significantly inferior to those of French, whose teaching in Spain had deep historical roots.Footnote 70 The measures deployed by the Americans and British were not sufficient to overcome such an uneven playing field during the last years of the Franco regime, but they paved the way for English to overtake French as the most in-demand foreign modern language in Spain in the 1980s.Footnote 71
Lack of resources also partly accounts for the limitations of English in terms of projecting a positive image of the Anglo-American powers during the period of regime change. Thus, although the post-Franco transition followed the moderate trajectory, as was hoped in London and Washington, British possession of Gibraltar and US collaboration with the dictatorship continued to cast a shadow over the perceptions of these countries in the eyes of many Spanish citizens.Footnote 72 English teaching was not a magic potion which neutralised the mistrust felt by the Spanish public towards the United States and United Kingdom. Neither were the tools of cultural seduction the panacea to right the wrongs caused by aggressive or short-term foreign policy goals.Footnote 73 Soft power initiatives, after all, can only yield benefit when designed with a long-term perspective in mind, one which also takes other foreign policy objectives into account. In the case analysed here, Anglo-American cultural diplomacy was incapable of counteracting the rejection caused by the military and geostrategic priorities of British and American leaders.
This does not mean, however, that the programmes of cultural enticement employed in Spain were totally ineffective. The popular resentment toward these countries at the time of Franco's death might well have been still greater were it not for the discreet mediation exercised by the promotion of English and of Anglo-American culture in the years preceding it. Hence, the importance of the programmes of English language promotion lay in their palliative capacity to prevent the further spread of Anglophobia and anti-Americanism in the twilight years of the Franco regime.
