Franco's Internationalists : Spanish health and welfare experts on the world stage, 1939-1959

Brydan, David (2016) Franco's Internationalists : Spanish health and welfare experts on the world stage, 1939-1959. Doctoral thesis, Birkbeck, University of London.

Abstract

This thesis examines how Spanish health and welfare experts thought and acted internationally during the first two decades of the Franco regime. Many Spanish experts were active on the world stage during the period, attending international conferences and events, collaborating with colleagues abroad, and working with international organisations. They formed part of the Francoist elites who were involved in a constant struggle to establish Spanish prestige and influence during the 1940s and 1950s, attempting to embed Spain into the international structures emerging around them, and to construct new patterns of international cooperation aligned with Francoist interests and ideology. Health and welfare experts were central to these efforts, able to exploit the ideas and practice which underpinned the internationalism of their profession, and to project an image of Franco’s Spain as a modern, scientifically advanced and socially just state. Drawing on the archival records of a range of international organisations, national governments and private groups from six different countries, this thesis reconstructs the international networks in which Spanish health and welfare experts operated. The first three chapters deal with their efforts to engage with the various international systems which developed during the period, from the Nazi ‘New Order’ to the United Nations. The final chapters explore three interrelated and overlapping ways in which Spanish experts attempted, with varying degrees of success, to construct alternative forms of international cooperation, from inter-imperialism in colonial Africa, to the forms of Catholic internationalism which emerged in the post-war period. By examining patterns of international cooperation from the perspective of Franco’s Spain, this thesis argues that the 1940s and 1950s were not characterised by the rise and fall of a unified model of liberal internationalism, but by an evolving struggle between competing and overlapping internationalisms from across the political spectrum.

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