THE EVOLUTION OF SPANISH FOREIGN POLICY,
FROM DICTATORSHIP TO DEMOCRACY
Prof. Charles Powell MA DPhil (Oxford)
Director, Elcano Royal Institute
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
(June 2017)
This course aims to provide students with an introduction to the remarkable transformation of Spanish foreign policy in the wake of General Franco’s death in 1975. Under his authoritarian regime, Spain was almost a pariah state, which was excluded from both the early stages of European integration and the Atlantic Alliance. With the arrival of democracy, it was able to secure membership of both the European Community and NATO, and went on to redefine its relations with the United States, its former Latin American colonies, and even North Africa and the Middle East (including Israel, a country with which it did not enjoy diplomatic relations until 1986). This case study allows students to explore the relationship between different political regimes and the foreign policies they are able to pursue, and to observe how this applies in practice to a medium-sized European state with significant transatlantic and Mediterranean connections.
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