Modernizers and Technocrats. The U.S. and Spain’s Educational and Scientific Policy in the Years of Developmentism

Abstract

Since the late 1950s, when Americans completed their military bases in Spain, U.S. officials knew they were caught in the middle of an almost impossible dilemma: they had to maintain their collaboration with the Francoist regime, while fostering relations with some opposition groups that could have a voice in a post-Franco Spain. In the 1960s, American officials and local technocrats found common ground in the formula ‘modernization and development’. The Spanish authorities understood the need for reforms in the fields of education and science, in order to sustain short and long-term economic growth. To implement them the country required more and better instructed technicians able to direct the country’s modernization. The U.S. government, always looking for soft-power ways of influencing the evolution of Spanish society, saw the situation as an opportunity to achieve its goals while downplaying America’s identification with Francoism in the eyes of the ‘leaders of the future’. The support of U.S. officials to the reformist General Law of Education of 1970 became the last chapter in the fine line American Public Diplomacy had to walk between its association with the Spanish regime and its support for democratic changes.