Franco Sells Spain to America

A groundbreaking study of the Franco regime's utilization of Hollywood film production in Spain, American tourism, and sophisticated public relations programs - including the most popular national pavilion at the 1964-65 New York World's Fair - in a determined effort to remake the Spanish dictatorship's post-World War II reputation in the US.

“Rosendorf’s book about the efforts to ‘sell’ Franco’s Spain to America is valuable for media historians … . The publication is grounded in a splendid amount of archival research on both sides of the Atlantic, interviews, press reports, and a wide scope of the literature. … Rosendorf persuasively demonstrates how insight in the use and manipulation of media messages is indispensable to understand modern international diplomacy.” (Thunnis van Oort, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Vol. 36 (1), March, 2016)

“Rosendorf’s book is a masterful piece of scholarship that puts history at the centre of the study of public diplomacy. It deserves wide readership among scholars and public relations practitioners, and not least among Spanish government officials, who have created public diplomacy and nation branding secretariats in the past few years,but seem oblivious to history.” (Francisco Seoane Pérez, Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 51 (4), 2016)

"Rosendorf does an excellent job stitching together the various strands of Spain's multifaceted approach to public diplomacy from 1945 to 1975. ... any good book prompts more questions than it can reasonably answer within the space allotted - and this is a very good book indeed." - Journal of American History

"The most original and interesting book on Franco's Spain published in ages." - Charles Powell, Director of the Real Instituto Elcano in Madrid, Spain

"Going far beyond traditional political or diplomatic history, this study presents a superb example of transnational history, showing how the Spanish and American people steadily gained an understanding of their shared tastes, artistic, sartorial, gastronomical, or otherwise." - Akira Iriye, Harvard University, USA

"[A] tour de force ... Rosendorf is a skilled storytellerand puts together an impressive account of exactly how the repositioning of Spain was begun and greatly advanced by the very man who is used to symbolize intransigence and the absence of transformation in the standard account: General Francisco Franco ... In writing about Franco in this way Rosendorf shows a degree of intellectual courage. The world loves its villains and doesn't always welcome nuance or a complex treatment of a formerly black and white case." - Place Branding and Public Diplomacy

Neal M. Rosendorf is currently a visiting professor of politics and international relations at New Mexico State University, USA. He holds a PhD in History from Harvard University and has held faculty appointments at Long Island University, the University of Queensland and Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, as well as a research fellowship at USC's Center on Public Diplomacy. He has written numerous articles, book chapters and reviews, and published in such venues as Diplomatic History, the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, the International History Review, the Journal of Cold War Studies, The American Interest, and the Foreign Service Journal.