Hispanidad and the Hollywood ambassador: friendship, kinship and the rearticulation of Spanish national identity before the pact of Madrid

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis essay argues that the discourse of friendship in public diplomacy surrounding the figure of US Ambassador Stanton Griffis during his tenure in Spain in 1951–1952 circulated in the Spanish national imaginary to construct a more favorable popular image of the United States. Though the ideological positions guiding the Truman presidency and the Franco regime differed drastically, positive affect under the guise of friendship circulated via the media spectacle surrounding Griffis’s image – thus fostering a sense of Griffis as a friend not only to the regime but also to individual Spaniards. Using articles drawn from the Spanish press, as well as letters found in the Stanton Griffis Papers at the Truman Library Institute, I will show how objects of the specific Spanish national pride promoted by the Franco regime – such as Catholicism and anti-Communism, brotherhood and even bullfighting – “stuck” to Griffis’s image via the use of affectively “sticky” words, such as kindness and sympathy, shared values, friendship itself and even family. This analysis reveals the flexibility of Franquista ideology and contributes to a deeper understanding of the discursive realignment towards the United States that occurred under the Franco regime in the years preceding the Pact of Madrid.