International propaganda in Spain during the first world war: State of the art and new contributions

Abstract

During the First World War, both belligerents and neutrals played a prominent role in the struggle for victory. Although Spain declared itself neutral in August 1914, the war reached the national territory through an intense propagandistic battle that was established to encourage benevolence and reduce the Spanish support to the enemy. Therefore, France, Britain and the German Empire mobilised large propaganda machineries that resorted to journalistic grants, film projections or the dissemination of posters and leaflets to achieve their objectives. Spain’s commercial dependence on democratic powers induced the country to lean towards the Entente. For this reason, the propagandistic efforts made by France and Britain were less intense and its contents emphasised the important commercial relations with Spain and the hard effects of the German submarine war. Nevertheless, France and Britain faced delicate problems such as the Spanish vindictive spirit against Gibraltar, a British region in Spanish territory and the anticlerical policy of French republicanism. In contrast, the circulation of German propaganda was intense, and despite the inclination of Spain towards the Entente, it had certain advantages among the public opinion, such as its military and economic prestige, the religious tolerance of Wilhelm II and its apparent federalism. Although there are studies that analyse the dissemination of international propaganda in Spain during the war, these are partial and incomplete. For this reason, the main relevance of this chapter resides in its interest to give an overview of the international propagandistic struggle in a neutral country such as Spain, and its correlation with policy of the belligerents. Thus, this chapter offers a revision of the state of the historical debate, a comparison of the propaganda policies implemented in Spain, but also a new analysis of the propaganda distributed by Britain.