The idea of hispanidad in the relationship of Francisco Franco and Rafael L. Trujillo (Spain, Dominican Republic)

For Ramiro de Maeztu, the idea of hispanidad served as a defense mechanism to the well-accepted notion of Anglo-Saxon superiority. Due to the extent of Spain's crisis, Maeztu elaborated a theory that re-evaluated Spanish tradition in an effort to provide his countrymen with an ideal that would assure their salvation. Within his chimeric delusion, he believed hispanidad would not only return Spain to its rightful position as a great nation, it would also allow Spaniards to appreciate their "authentic" heritage.; The concept of hispanidad employed by Franco's dictatorship in the Dominican Republic is the principal object of investigation for this dissertation: The myth of hispanidad that finally ruptured the international isolation in which Franco found himself. Although it was not until the fall of 1939 that Franco sent his first emissary of hispanidad to the Dominican Republic, my study starts during the first years of the Spanish Civil War, as part of an effort to provide historical perspective to these early relations. I researched both the early 20 th-century origins of the permanent Spanish colony as well as the predominance of Spanish culture in the Dominican nation at the end of the nineteenth century. My analysis ends with a study of the relationship between the two nations in 1954, when Trujillo visited Madrid.; In the Dominican nation, Franco's message was well received, interpreted as a familiar historical and spiritual community shared between Spain its Latin American offspring. Spanish ethos had long been nourished for the Dominican intellectual elite even before the twentieth century, and it was considered an integral part of their cultural heritage. It was within this framework of acceptance that the Francoist message of hispanidad was so carefully manipulated by the Trujillo regime's propaganda machine. The Dominican dictator used the idea of hispanidad to his own benefit, reinforcing the Dominicans' deep-seated, anti-African sentiments and justifying his administration's platform emphasizing "white" social mores, Catholic religious superiority and a general predominance of European culture.