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"Britain and Spain led the two greatest Empires of the modern era, with perhaps the most important legacy that their two languages are amongst the most widely spoken in the modern world. Yet the relationship between these two cultural giants has not always been straightforward. The founding of the British-Spanish Society has its origins in 1916 as the Anglo-Spanish Society, which was founded during the First World War by a group of British academics, students and businessmen. It was a means of reaching out in social, cultural and trade friendship with their Spanish counterparts at a time when Spain's official neutrality seemed to be edging closer towards Germany. It was subsequently known as the Anglo-Spanish League of Friendship, and finally the British-Spanish Society, its members continued to promote these objectives after that particular war had come to an end. Much has changed since then, with an ever-shifting political and diplomatic environment affecting the relations between Britain and Spain, but throughout this the core values of the Society have remained constant. This fascinating book tells the story of an organisation at the heart of the relationship between two of Europe's major powers. It will be compulsory reading for those interested in the process of 'soft diplomacy' but above all for those interested in the relationship between Spain and Britain."--Back cover

This article explores the historical factors that allowed a weak state like Spain to have cultural influence in other European countries during the interwar period. Drawing on archival material from several countries, I argue that Spain could not promote systematically its culture in the early 1920s, but that it gained in soft power because of Western European countries' new interest first in Spanish neutrality and then in the Latin American market. When the Spanish state developed an active cultural diplomacy in the late 1920s, it was able to derive benefit from the work that other countries had already done to promote Spanish language and culture.

The border separating/unifying Gibraltar with Spain is reproduced in public discourse as a threat and an obstacle to the normalisation of political life in the small enclave. Yet, an in-depth socio-historical analysis of local cross-border relations over the 20th century, shows how the Gibraltarian national identity and local government originate from the border rather than in opposition to it. The fencing of the frontier imposed by the Franco's regime between 1969-1985 allows the discursive (re)production of a Gibraltarian identity distinct from that of the Spanish neighbours - and, in part, from that of the English colonisers.