<i>Emisarios de la moderación</i>. La diplomacia pública británica ante el fin de las dictaduras ibéricas

Abstract

From 1973 to 1977 the Western allies committed to ensuring a controlled political change in Portugal and Spain. Although the end of the Iberian authoritarian regimes has traditionally been approached by scholars as a domestic matter, new academic works emphasize the international aspects of the substitution of the Iberian dictatorships. These approaches focus on the «high diplomacy» that was typical of the international power relations during Cold War. However, our contention is that there was not only a political and economic supervision from abroad on the Portuguese and Spanish transitions. There was also cultural intervention to reduce the destabilizing consequences of the political change in both countries. This article falls within this field of cultural international action. It deals with the cultural, information and propaganda policies deployed by Great Britain’s government to promote British foreign interests and to facilitate a moderate transition to a pluralist democracy in Portugal and Spain. Thus, this contribution analyses a topic which the specialised bibliography has paid little attention to. It also adds the cultural factor in the studies on the international dimension of the Iberian transition.