Beyond the Spain is Different slogan: putting an end to tourist clichs about Spain

Spain’s image abroad and how it has evolved over the centuries was the focus of a recent episode of Karambolage, a TV show on Franco-German European culture channel Arte. It traced the evolution of the “Black Legend” from the 16th century to the tourist slogan “Spain is Different”, popularised in the 1960s, suggesting an almost natural continuity between older historical stereotypes and tourism marketing associated with the Franco regime. In the programme’s account, Spain is today associated with sunshine and flamenco, after having long been burdened with a negative reputation. From the 16th century onwards, at the height of its colonial empire, Protestant rivals spread hostile propaganda that helped shape the so-called Black Legend, portraying Spaniards as brutal and backward. This view persisted, particularly in 19th-century France, where the doubly racist expression “Africa begins at the Pyrenees” placed the country on the margins of a supposedly more civilised Europe. The episode presents the following sequence: the civil war, followed by the Franco dictatorship, reinforced the country’s international isolation. In the 1960s, the regime then opened Spain to tourism. Under the leadership of Minister Manuel Fraga Iribarne, an ambitious campaign centred on tradition was launched under the slogan “Spain is Different,” which is presented as the trigger for Spain’s tourism boom. The problem with this narrative lies in the way it simplifies a much more complex process. Moving from the Black Legend to the ironic reappropriation of a Francoist slogan may appear coherent. This interpretation echoes recent research on the role of tourism in the construction of Spanish identity and its international image. But by joining up the dots in this way, the TV programme revives historical clichés that recent scholarship has significantly nuanced. A seductive but peripheral difference While the video evokes the frustration of some Spaniards with the distorted images associated with their country, it nevertheless tends to reinforce the idea of a Spain defined by the external gaze. This stems from the processes of eroticisation and exoticisation developed in the 19th century by the hegemonic powers of France and Britain towards their former imperial rival. These representations are neither simple contempt nor a linear continuity between anti-imperial propaganda and later forms of condescension. They place Spain within an ambivalent form of otherness that relegates the former empire to the margins of a modernity defined elsewhere. Described as peripheral, the peninsula is simultaneously invested as a romantic space and a source of political and artistic inspiration. Even if visitor numbers remained far lower than in France, Switzerland or Italy, Spain occupied a central place in the European imagination. Read more: Tourisme culturel et mondialisation : l’Espagne, entre fiction et réalité The 1900 world’s fair – Andalusia under Moorish rule. Alexandre Lunois. Bibliothèque nationale de France, CC BY Contempt and exaltation stem from the same dynamic. These clichés combine hierarchy and attraction, aestheticisation and distance. Admiration itself participates in a symbolic reclassification that assigns Spain a seductive but peripheral difference. It is therefore not enough simply to complicate the French gaze. It is also necessary to avoid reducing Spain to the object of an external symbolic construction. Such a reading obscures the country’s own internal dynamics. Spain is not only shaped by foreign projections. It is also a space of internal debate and intellectual circulation that extends beyond its borders. From the early modern period, Spanish thinkers questioned the legitimacy of conquest and fully participated in European intellectual exchanges. In the 19th century, Spanish exiles and travellers encountered the industrialisation of wealthier countries and the prominence of world fairs. These experiences fuelled fundamental debates about Spain’s place in modernity. Presenting the country as trapped in a negative reputation passively endured amounts to overlooking these internal debates and transnational exchanges, which helped define its place in European history. An ambivalent slogan But the main blind spot of this narrative appears when we examine the history of the slogan itself. It is true that a widely shared memory attributes “Spain is Different” to the Francoist Minister Manuel Fraga. Yet research shows that the formula emerged as early as the republican years, circulated widely in the 1940s and 1950s, and that the campaign launched under Fraga was more its culmination than its invention. “Spain is Different” appeared as early as 1932–1933 in a series of photographic posters produced under the direction of Rafael Calleja, a conservative senior civil servant who remained in office from the Primo de Rivera dictatorship to the Republic. The slogan notably accompanied the image of an alcaldesa of Zamarramala, a female figure symbolically invested with authority during the annual festival. SPAIN – Spain is Different PNT/OTC. Photo Francisco Andrada, 1932-1933. Arxiu Històric de la Ciutat de Barcelona AHCB4-205/C05 The choice is already singular and came at a time when the Republic was expanding women’s civic participation and profoundly transforming the political and social order. During the civil war, the formula was quickly reappropriated. On the back cover of the magazine L’Esquella de la Torratxa, a family of English tourists contemplates a striking version of the poster. The “alcaldesa” is replaced by Franco, whose pose was meant to appear effeminate – a way of undermining him in the political culture of the time. Surrounded by a bishop, a colonial soldier and Nazi and Fascist officers, the motif of “difference” becomes political satire. It no longer refers to national particularities but to the spectacle offered to hesitant European democracies of the alliance between the putschists and the Fascist powers and their use of colonial troops. International tourist propaganda – Visit Spain! David Santsalvador, La Esquella de la torratxa 13/11/1936. Biblioteca Virtual de Prensa Histórica, CC BY-NC-ND In the English-speaking press, the slogan also served as a key to interpreting the conflict. It often appeared in accounts marked by imperial condescension that presented a “different” Spain as an unstable anomaly within civilised Europe. This longstanding trope helped naturalise violence, presenting it as the supposed expression of an inherent otherness rather than as part of a broader European breakdown of order. Neither the slogan nor its main promoter disappeared after the war. The formula was revived in the 1940s and 1950s, notably in the volumes Apologías Turísticas de España, directed by Rafael Calleja (1943, 1957), as well as in several photographic poster campaigns featuring the slogans “Spain is Beautiful and Different” and “Spain is Beautiful and Different: Visit Sunny Spain.” In the post–civil war period, the emphasis on Spain’s singularity accompanied the regime’s efforts to break its international isolation and integrate into the Western order dominated by the United States. Tourism promotion was now primarily aimed at the North American public, while this singularity became a diplomatic resource intended to present the country as an acceptable partner within the Western bloc. Franco and Eisenhower met in Madrid, December 22, 1959. WikiCommons, CC BY When Manuel Fraga relaunched a major campaign in 1962 under the slogan “Spain is Different,” the country was no longer isolated. The agreements concluded with the Holy See and the United States in 1953, Spain’s entry into the UN in 1955 and the Stabilisation Plan of 1959 marked its integration into the Western order and ushered in a period of very rapid growth. In the context of the post-war economic boom, tourism became one of the drivers of economic and social transformation. Spain was already welcoming nearly seven million visitors a year at the beginning of the decade and became part of an international leisure market alongside Italy and Greece. The regime certainly sought to attract foreign exchange and improve its image. But reducing this policy to simple folkloric instrumentalisation oversimplifies a society undergoing rapid change. Administrators, entrepreneurs, artists and municipalities all participated in the construction of this new image. In an increasingly competitive tourism market, “difference” became a tool of differentiation. The rise of Spanish tourism is better explained by structural dynamics in post-war Europe than by the isolated action of a supposed providential figure. Finally, implicitly contrasting a supposedly “backward” Spain with a “modern” Europe reproduces an old pattern that historiography has largely deconstructed. Spanish history should not be read as a trajectory lagging behind a supposedly normative European centre. Formulated in a prestigious cultural media outlet from wealthier countries, this opposition inadvertently revives older logics of cultural hierarchy. From propaganda to reappropriation: when the slogan escapes the state This same linear reading appears in the way the programme connects the Black Legend to the contemporary use of “Spain is Different,” as if these clichés had ultimately been internalised. Yet the slogan has had a long and contested history. From its earliest uses, it served to dispute the definition of the nation: in the conservative reaction to republican reforms, in antifascist satire during the civil war, in Anglo-Saxon narratives marked by imperial condescension, and later in a Franco regime first seeking US protection and then concerned with attracting foreign exchange and European recognition. The Spanish example shows that ironic appropriation can constitute a form of critical distance. In the terms proposed by British sociologist Stuart Hall, this corresponds to an oppositional reading, in which a message produced by those in power is taken up and turned against them. The problem lies not in the irony itself but in the linear framework in which this history is placed. It was not the last time. In 2012, the creation of “Marca España” by the Popular Party government – a party founded by Manuel Fraga at the end of Francoism – formed part of the neoliberal logic of nation branding. The organisation aimed to improve the country’s image abroad and among Spaniards themselves. Very quickly, the name became an object of sarcasm. At the slightest train delay, after a sporting defeat or a corruption scandal, a simple shrug was enough to prompt an ironic, “Marca España.” Spanish distinctiveness has never constituted a stable essence. It has been a stake, a site of projection and conflict. Presenting it as a continuous thread linking longstanding stereotypes and Francoist marketing erases what matters most: Spanish “difference” has always been an object of dispute. A weekly e-mail in English featuring expertise from scholars and researchers. 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