In the three decades following the Second World War, during the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco, Spain became the playground for millions of carefree tourists from Europe’s prosperous democracies.  This book chronicles how their presence not only helped to strengthen the Franco regime’s economic and political standing, but also provoked institutional change, undermining the dictatorship’s moral austerity and economic autarky.  The study looks beneath exotic imagery of bulls and flamenco dancers, and sensationalized stories of Francoist police persecuting bikini-clad foreigners, to examine how the advent of foreign tourism profoundly influenced the regime’s diplomatic and economic orientations as early as 1945.  In the 1960s, mass tourism was emblematic of a dynamic, modernizing Spain, and contributed significantly to the changing political and social conditions in which Spain’s post-Franco democracy was born.

Sasha D. Pack is Assistant Professor of History at the University at Buffalo, the State University of New York, where he teaches courses in Modern European and World History.