Introduction

The notion of creolization explores cultural and linguistic mixing that stems from the encounters of cultures in the same location. It is usually taken to refer to historical colonial and postcolonial experiences in the Caribbean and Latin America. The historical experience and contemporary legacy of creolization in Latin America and the Caribbean is intricately bound up with slavery, settler colonialism, racialized and gendered violence. While the question of how far the term can be applied to other social, geographic and historical contexts is contested (Hannerz, 2002; Hall, 2003a; 2003b; Palmié, 2006; Knorr, 2010), I take some inspiration from the analytical aspects of the concept for exploring the European context of the early twenty-first century. Creolization as transculturation produces an ‘indigenous vernacular space, marked by the fusion of cultural elements drawn from all originating cultures, but resulting in a configuration in which these elements, though never equal, can no longer be disaggregated […] but have been permanently “translated”’ (Hall, 2003a, 31). One analytic aspect of the concept of creolization that I am particularly interested in here is the way in which cultural mixing is understood as productive of notions of belonging to the new locality: ‘creolization was always linked with indigenization’ (Knorr, 2010, 733). While Knorr suggests that creolization encompasses both ethnic and trans-ethnic identifications, and therefore tends to be inclusive (737), I deviate from Knorr who argues for reserving the notion of creolization only for the constitution of finite, distinct, Creole ethnic groups. Instead, the analytic potential of the concept of creolization is that it challenges assumptions of ethnic and cultural boundedness (Hall, 2003a; 2003b). Hannerz (2002, 14) proposes that the concept of creolization is particularly suited to ‘integrate cultural with social analysis’. However, when exploring the concept of creolization in the context of migration to Europe, it is important to be clear that any appreciation of the productive, culturally and socially democratizing aspects of creolization cannot be abstracted from the realities of oppression, violence and genocide.

What follows is a proposal of creolity rather than kinship as a model for comparativist practice. The original proposal was made to Professor Wai Chi Dimock, whose paper is discussed in the body of the chapter. I am a Europeanist (as is Professor Dimock), and I was thinking of Dante and Latin when I crafted this proposal rather than Caribbean-based creolization theory. Having said that, such theory has much to tell us about Dante and Latin itself as well as how it is that a world system such as knowledge, can be altered through the insertion of the question of ‘Creolizing Europe’.

Why should these thoughts be at all useful in thinking of ‘Creolizing Europe’ today? First, because in Dante's understanding of popular Italian as varieties of Creole and his choice of an aristocratic (‘curial’) political Creole as ‘Italian’ we can situate our own project of Creolizing Europe within the beginnings of European nationalisms and nation states. Second, through literature's capacity to inaugurate an ‘experience of the impossible’ (both Freud and Derrida insisted on this, in different ways), our general discussion may give us a way of thinking outside of the requirements of activism in terms of indentitarian politics which tend towards essentialization rather than thinking and acting beyond this in terms of Glissantian creolity.

It must be a Glissantian creolity though that acknowledges the place of capital and class in any theorization as well as a particular view of imperialism. I stumbled on the idea that imperialism was an ‘enabling violation’ at least thirty years ago. Subsequent work willy-nilly located our class, now global, as the beneficiary, not only by birth, but other circumstances as well. I have never been able to think of descriptive arguments for counter- or alternative-modernities as anything but specific to this amorphous ‘class’. Globality and the creolity which this necessitates can save us if we assert that everything now is what ‘modern’ (not counter-, not alternative-) is, and live up to the task of disciplinary revision. This task is not an easy or straightforward one but we must remember that not every ‘European’ invented the steam engine, not every ‘American’ the telephone.

My late wife Marina and I joined the Anglo Spanish Society over forty years ago, when Sir Peter Allen was Chairman. He had been Chief Executive of ICI and was married to the elegant and charming Consuelo Allen, whose family owned the glamorous Embassy Café in Madrid. I became a member of the Council. In those days our Society's main event was a ball held mostly at the Grosvenor House Grand Ball Room in Park Lane. It was a major event in the social calendar attracting between six hundred and a thousand punters. Often Royalty were present. I can remember Prince Edward attending with Princess Elena of Spain and on another occasion Princess Alexandra and her husband, Sir Angus Ogilvy. When the ball took place at Syon House, Prince Charles and Lady Diana graced the occasion.

During the reign of Sir John Russell as Chairman a trip to Madrid was organised by the redoubtable Sheila Stewart, who was a loyal member of the Council of the Society for many years. It was a highly successful venture and included an audience with King Juan Carlos at the Oriente Palace. We were requested to form a square in the audience salon before the King processed around the room shaking hands with all of us one by one before delivering his welcoming address.

Over the years I recall various social events organised by Lady Parker and Lady Lindsay respectively. There was a private viewing at the Royal Academy with suitable live background music and alcoholic encouragement. Then there was another spectacular private viewing at the National Gallery of Spanish sculpture in wood, which Jimmy Burns Marañón arranged after a suitable breakfast at the Garrick Club. I was fortunate to see the exhibition again at the Museo National de Escultura in Valladolid.

While José Puig de Bellacasa was in post as Spanish Ambassador to the Court of St James, a friend of mine, Alan Davis, because a High Sheriff of the City of London, when there were rumors of a proposed state visit to the UK by the King and Queen of Spain.

While anthropologists and cultural historians have related ‘creolization’ to processes of transformation produced by colonial rule, slavery and agrarian capitalism (Mintz, 1996; 2008; 2010; Stewart, 2007), other scholars have explored creolization as an expression of global cultural mixing or as a theoretical proposal reaching beyond the Caribbean region (Cohen, 2007; Cohen and Toninato, 2010; El-Tayeb, 2011, 2014; Gowricharn, 2006; Gutiérrez Rodríguez, 2010, 2011; Hannerz, 1987, 1992, 1996, 2002; Lionnet and Shih, 2011; Mudimbe-Boyl, 2002; Pratt and Rosello, 2007). However, the decolonial epistemological contribution of Caribbean intellectuals (Balutansky and Sourieau, 1998; Britton, 1999; Forsdick and Murphy, 2009; Nesbitt, 2013) – such as C.L.R. James (Balutansky, 1997; King, 2001), Frantz Fanon (1967), Lewis R. Gordon (1997), Eric Williams (1994), Edward Kamau Brathwaite (1971), Walter Rodney (1969), Marcus Garvey (2005), Sylvia Wynter (1989), Jean Bernabé, Patrick Chamoiseau, Raphaël Confiant (1990), Stuart Hall (2003) and particularly Édouard Glissant (1996) – in conceptualizing ‘creolization’ in political, economic, cultural and theoretical terms, has been underestimated in these writings.

Creolizing Europe aims to reverse this tendency by critically interrogating creolization (see in this volume Spivak; Hall; and Vergès) as the decolonial, rhizomatic thinking necessary for understanding the social and cultural transformations set in motion by trans/national dislocations, a Glissantian analytics of transversality and what Encarnación Gutiérrez Rodríguez (2011; and in this volume) terms ‘transversal conviviality’. In this sense, Stuart Hall's chapter on ‘Créolité and the Process of Creolization’ sets out the theoretical orientation that guides this volume in his challenge to seek out creolization's applicability outside of the Caribbean. Gaytri Chakravorty Spivak's ‘World Systems and the Creole, Rethought’ also addresses the limitation in grasping the theoretical and policy implications of the proposal of creolization. Discussing creolity rather than kinship as a model for comparativist practice, Spivak suggests that we start with Dante's understanding of popular Italian as varieties of Creole and his choice of an aristocratic (‘curial’) political Creole as ‘Italian’, as this will enable us to perceive the beginnings of European nationalisms as grounded on a creolized understanding of themselves while asserting kinship. Engaging with the French-Reunion politics of remembrance, Françoise Vergès's chapter on ‘Creolization and Resistance’ discusses the persistence of politics of oblivion in the former metropoles of colonial power.

Los cambios que se produjeron al frente tanto de la Embajada española en Londres como de la Liga de la Amistad marcaron el inicio de una nueva época en la historia de la asociación. El recién nombrado presidente, John Balfour, planteó una reorganización de la institución para recuperar algunos de sus principios originales, asegurar su estabilidad financiera y limitar su campo de acción a actividades culturales y educativas.

Para ello, convocó una asamblea general que se celebró en el Challoner Club, una agrupación de hombres católicos que había Londres, el 28 de mayo de 1958. Este encuentro fue presidido por Edward Palmer, ya que Balfour estaba fuera del país. Durante la sesión, se alcanzaron varios acuerdos importantes. El primero de ellos consistía en subir las cuotas a todos los socios. A pesar de que se habían recaudado 1.220 libras en la Ball de 1957, los elevados costes de The Quarterly Journal obligaban a adoptar esta medida. La segunda decisión relevante fue la elección de los integrantes del comité ejecutivo, que incluyó a antiguos miembros del mismo y a nuevas caras. Por último, se cambiaron algunos puntos en la constitución de la Liga, la cual, a partir de entonces, pasó a llamarse The Anglo-Spanish Society. De esta forma, se recuperaba parte de la denominación originaria, ya que se suprimía la coletilla de “of the British Empire and Spanish-speaking countries”.

Esta reunión garantizó la continuidad de la sociedad y perfiló el nuevo camino que iba a emprender. En esta etapa, la asociación abandonó cualquier rasgo ideológico y se centró en promover el conocimiento del idioma y de la cultura españolas en el Reino Unido. The Quarterly Journal puso de manifiesto este viraje y empezó a prestar más atención a temas culturales. Su editor requirió la colaboración de eminentes hispanistas británicos, como la del catedrático Alexander Augustine Parker, quien publicó algún artículo en la revista. También se intensificó la relación con otras organizaciones bilaterales como The Anglo-Catalan Society, que había sido fundada en 1954 y tenía una vocación educativa muy marcada.

This carefully researched and meticulous study by Luis G. Martínez del Campo of a hundred years of the British Spanish Society is interesting on many levels.

First, the vissicitudes through which the Society passed during the 20th century – including re-branding, winding up, and then re-branding again – is a good reflection of the turmoil experienced in Europe (and indeed the wider world) during that century.

Secondly, the seemingly anecdotal inspiration that lay behind the foundation of the Society – namely the coincidence of the 3rd centenary of the deaths of William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes – goes to the heart of what the British Spanish Society has been, and is, about. Namely, the cultural baggage that our two countries have accumulated over the years.

Familiar names spring up again and again. Byron, George Borrow, Richard Ford, Unamuno, Dámaso Alonso, Gregorio Marañón – to mention a few figures from the past. Nor will it have escaped notice that some of the most prestigeous contemporary writers on Spain are British – Hugh Thomas, Gerald Brennan, Paul Preston, again to mention but a few.

The fact is that Britain and Spain led the two greatest Empires of the modern era. And perhaps the most important inheritance of all that is that our two languages are now the two most widely spoken languages in the free world.

And it seems to me that the real challenge for the British Spanish Society going forward lies precisely in this area.

It is now the case that English is established as the universal language. As a Brit I am both pleased and proud of that. But equally I am very aware that language carries with it a whole package of cultural values and attitudes. So, unless we want to live in a mono-cultural world, we have a duty to promote both the Spanish language and the cultural values it brings, as they are the only ones that can offer an appropriate counter-poise to an Anglo dominated world.

Hopefully this History of the first 100 years of the British Spanish Society will inspire its members to take up that challenge.

I begin with two apologies. First, for the schematic nature of my presentation. I am trying to map together a different number of areas in order to pose some basic questions about the process of creolization. This inevitably means that I cannot go into the complexity and detail which each of them deserves. Second, an apology for obliging Derek Walcott to listen to yet another exercise in ‘cultural theory’, which I know he thinks is a tremendous waste of time.

I want to think about the passage from Édouard Glissant quoted in the notes prepared by the Documenta 11 team for this Platform, to the effect that ‘the whole world is becoming creolized’. What can such a statement mean, and what are its conceptual implications? I explore these questions in the context of the themes proposed in the notes: ‘Can the concept of créolité be applied to describe each process of cultural mixing, or is it peculiar to the French Caribbean? Does it constitute a genuine alternative to the entrenched paradigms that have dominated the study of postcolonial and postimperial identities?’ Do ‘créolité ’ and ‘creolization’ refer to the same phenomenon, or does ‘creolization’ offer us a more general model or framework for cultural intermixing? Should ‘creolization’ replace such terms as hybridity, métissage, syncretism? In short, what is its general conceptual applicability?

Obviously, Glissant's remark that the whole world is becoming creolized is a metaphorical, or better, a metonymical, statement. That is so to say, it depends on the extension or expansion of a specific concept to other historical situations, other historical moments, other kinds of society, other cultural configurations. This can be a dangerous exercise, because it means mapping a concept across a number of conceptual frontiers; and the question is, at the end of this process, what relationship does the expanded concept have to the original? Has it moved so far as to have destroyed all the richness and specificity present in its first, more concrete, application? This is certainly the critique of ‘creolization’ offered today by some Caribbean scholars, who say that its ubiquitous application has eroded its strategic conceptual value.

Es con un gran sentido de orgullo, así como de optimismo que la British Spanish Society publica esta historia conmemorando su primer centenario.

La Sociedad tuvo sus inicios en 1916, en medio de un grave conflicto internacional y de incertidumbre económica, cuando un grupo de académicos, estudiantes y hombres de negocios, apoyados por diplomáticos británicos promovió un acercamiento social, cultural, y comercial hacia sus homólogos españoles. El texto original de su fundación declaró que el objeto de la recién creada Sociedad Anglo-Española era la promoción de “las relaciones, tanto intelectuales como comerciales, ofreciendo hospitalidad y oportunidades de intercambio social a los visitantes de habla hispana en las Islas Británicas, fomentando en Gran Bretaña e Irlanda el estudio de la lengua española, de su literatura, arte e historia, y ayudando a los estudiantes británicos que quisiesen conocer mejor tierras españolas”.

En las décadas siguientes la Sociedad sobrevivió como organización en medio de un entorno político y diplomático siempre cambiante que afectaba a las relaciones entre Gran Bretaña y España. Sus miembros permanecieron constantes en su deseo de ver a los pueblos de ambos países encontrar un terreno común, en el cual se fomentase el diálogo y se intercambiase lo más positivo y creativo de cada país. Su misión siguió siendo la de promover la amistad y el entendimiento entre los pueblos de Gran Bretaña y España a través del conocimiento de las costumbres, el idioma, las instituciones y la historia de cada uno.

En el año 2000, la Sociedad celebró el inicio de un nuevo milenio, al pasar de ser una asociación a constituirse en una fundación benéfica registrada en virtud de la legislación británica. Este marco legal permitió que la Sociedad pudiese adoptar medidas para cumplir mejor su misión sin interferencias políticas, y al mismo tiempo con una mayor responsabilidad financiera, creando un Consejo de Supervisión de Administración, además de un Consejo Ejecutivo. Entre sus innovaciones hay que destacar el lanzamiento de un programa de becas, con el apoyo de la recaudación de fondos por la Sociedad y sus socios corporativos, que ha servido de estímulo para postgraduados británicos y españoles a través de diversas disciplinas, entre ellos el autor de esta investigación historica.

In the early modern era, the relations between countries were determined by commercial, geopolitical and military factors. Different states exerted control over other regions through economic strategies, armed forces or the negotiating capacities of their leaders. Accordingly, diplomatic historians have traditionally paid special attention to trade, military prowess and the interaction between political elites. However, in the 20th Century, other factors have gained increasing relevance in the foreign policy of a given state, such as education, intellectual networks and the sharing of ideas. Consequently, the specialised historiography shifted its focus onto cultural elements, which are now central to the history of international relations.

In the early 20th Century, culture started to become a key component of international relations. The Department of State of the USA and the foreign offices of many European countries realised how useful cultural propaganda campaigns were for diplomacy. France and the United Kingdom founded educational corporations to contribute to their foreign policies: the Institut Françis (1922) and the British Council (1934). The equivalent Spanish institution is the Instituto Cervantes, which was set up much later, in 1991.

Nevertheless, the Spanish government established several institutions to meet this diplomatic objective by promoting Spanish culture abroad and developing educational relations with other countries in the first half of the 20th Century. In 1907 the Board for Advanced Studies and Scientific Research (Junta para Ampliación de Estudios e Investigaciones Científicas, JAE) was founded, and later, in 1921 the Board of Cultural Relations (Junta de Relaciones Culturales, JRC) was created. Both organisations were established to promote intellectual contacts with European and American nations. In 1932, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Spain issued a report explaining the role of these institutions in Spanish foreign policy:

El final de la Gran Guerra supuso el inicio de un nuevo camino para la Anglo-Spanish Society, que renunció definitivamente a cualquier tipo de objetivo bélico y tuvo que adaptar sus fines y organigrama a la nueva situación. Aunque tanto la sede de Londres como sus filiales ya estaban funcionando a pleno rendimiento a la altura de 1918, el interés del gobierno británico y el respaldo de diferentes sectores sociales disminuyeron con el advenimiento de la paz. Por un lado, la Foreign Office optó por una tutela menos intensa de la asociación, la cual nunca llegó a realizar la tarea de propaganda en el exterior para la que había sido creada. Por el otro, la mayoría de sus promotores había condicionado su participación en el proyecto al enfrentamiento armado. Es decir, entendieron que su vinculación a esta institución era una especie de servicio a la patria en un momento difícil y la firma del armisticio hizo que muchos de ellos abandonaran el barco.

A principios de 1919, uno de los mayores impulsores de la sede londinense, Israel Gollancz, dimitió de todos sus cargos y se desvinculó de la misma. En esa misma época, otro de los valedores de la asociación, Ronald Burrows, también abandonó la gestión. Una enfermedad le hizo dejar en suspenso todas sus actividades y finalmente falleció en 1920.

Durante el periodo bélico, ambos habían tenido claras conexiones con la Foreign Office. Además, Burrows era el director del King's College London y había puesto este centro al servicio de los intereses de la sociedad. Su óbito marcaba el inicio de un relativo distanciamiento de la Anglo-Spanish Society con ambos organismos.

Aunque la actuación de Mackay había sido criticada por algunos responsables del proyecto, el veterano catedrático continuó muy activo y adquirió un mayor protagonismo. Años más tarde, el embajador español en el Reino Unido y presidente honorífico de la sociedad, Alfonso Merry del Val, reconocía la labor acometida por Mackay para poner en marcha la asociación:

After World War II, British-Spanish relations remained frosty. Although Spain was theoretically out of the conflict, Franco had supported the German army with a military division, “la División Azul”, and had been ideologically in the side of the Italian Fascist State. Therefore, the Allies’ victory in 1945 caused the international isolation of the Spanish dictatorship, which was deliberately excluded. In 1946, governments of different countries (France, US, UK) did not authorise the admission of Spain as member of the United Nations, and the Spanish regime became marginalised in the international field until the beginning of the 1950s.

From the end of World War II to 1955, when Spain was accepted as member of the United Nations, Franco designed a diplomatic strategy to distance himself from the support he had given to Hitler. Consequently, Ramón Serrano Suñer and other fascist members of the regime were set aside. In the context of international isolation, the Spanish government showed interest in supporting institutions that wanted to improve the diplomatic relations between Spain and other countries in the post-war period. For this reason, Franco's dictatorship welcomed the efforts to reorganise the Anglo-Spanish Society, which had a potential interest for Spain's foreign policy.

In the early post-war period, a small group called “Friendship with Spain” was formed in London and, according to the limited amount of evidences that we have, tried to replace the Society that Henry Thomas and Edward Wilson had dissolved in 1947. However, this new organisation was also dissolved, so in 1950 the baton was picked up by another group: The Anglo-Spanish League of Friendship (which had different name, but the same principal members). The League was independent, but became linked to the Spanish Embassy in London, which supported the continuity of the association. Spanish diplomats wanted to take advantage of the League to promote a good image of Franco's dictatorship in the UK, but their wishes were against the non-political principles that the new institution defended. From the beginning, most members of the association were aware of the difficulties to remain politically neutral, under Spanish diplomatic pressure.

Introduction

Social sciences have borrowed the term creolization from linguists who tracked the emergence of new languages from two or more pre-existing languages. Although a fluid concept, creolization generally refers to the socio-cultural results of the interaction between African slaves, European settlers, Asian indentured workers and indigenous peoples. Cultural creolization, understood as the intermingling and mixing of two, or several, formerly discrete traditions or cultures, has been applied to societies such as Louisiana, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Réunion and Mauritius (Spitzer 2003; Eriksen 2007). Ever since the word was coined by the Portuguese and Spanish explorers during the sixteenth century, creole (crioulo in Portuguese) and creolization have meant different things in different times and places (Stewart 2007). For example, today, while crioulo refers to the official language in Cape Verde, it has come to mean also Cape Verdean identity and culture.

If we think about this usage of creolization as identity and culture, Portugal has had a creolized past and continues to have a creolized present. However, in Portugal, the terms miscigenação and mestiçagem are more commonly used in preference to creolization to refer to cultural and racial mixing and thhave been at the center of the debates on national identity for most of the twentieth century. As will be discussed in this chapter, much debate has been generated by Gilberto Freyre's work on Luso-tropicalism, a term that has been employed to analyze racial and cultural mixing in the wider Portuguese-speaking context (Caldeira, 1993; Venâncio, 2000; Vale de Almeida, 2007), just as creolization has been used to analyze societies in the Caribbean and elsewhere. Creolization emphasizes constant contact, creative interplay and transformation in the societies, cultures and bodies that are its result (Hannerz, 1992; Boisvert, 2005), and one of the main ideas behind Freyre's work on Luso-tropicalism was the appreciation and normalization of miscegenation (Venâncio, 2000). As Riesz (2000, 105) puts it, Luso-tropicalism is a ‘rehabilitation and appreciation of the indigenous and African contribution to the Brazilian nation and culture’, in what could be seen as a ‘contraposition to a colonial way of writing history which highlights the white and European contribution’.

Introduction

In this chapter, I deploy a queer diaspora framework, public sphere theory and a creolization perspective to understand the narratives and opinions of British South Asian gay and bisexual men on key queer tropes of sexuality, intimacy, non-monogamy and marriage. The recent increase in cultural, social and political organizing among British South Asian lesbian, gay male, bisexual, transgender and queer people, I argue, results in the formation of discursive spaces that allow for the articulation of complex narratives on intimacy, sexuality, cultural or religious values and citizenship that creolize queer thought and politics. I conceive these spaces as part of a larger process towards the formation of queer diasporic counter-publics. A creolization perspective is helpful for refining diaspora theory, because it endorses a rhizomatic understanding of connection, privileges ‘routes’ over ‘roots’ and avoids categorical rigidity and singularity, which have been common features of certain multicultural orthodoxies (Glissant, 2010b). Creolization focuses on multiple ‘point(s) of entanglement’, which allows for the conception of inter-related and ‘situational’ communities. It highlights frictions, but does not resolve tension into ready-made assumptions of ‘possible’ or ‘impossible’ identities (El-Tayeb, 2011, 172).

The chapter will first develop a queer diaspora framework as a conceptual tool for reading respondents’ comments on sexuality and sexual politics. Diaspora theory has frequently advocated hybridity as the concept most suitable for interpreting processes of cultural mixing. I argue here that creolization is a preferable alternative, because it avoids some of the shortcomings of the hybridity model. This is then followed by an argument that a dialogue between diaspora and public sphere theories can be helpful for understanding British South Asian gay and bisexual men's ideas on relationality.

What appears in these pages is the history of the British-Spanish Society and the effect of its action in the relations between the UK and Spain during the 20th Century. It was a non-political organisation, but the governments of both countries had interests in controlling it, which demonstrated that culture was a very useful tool in the diplomatic sphere. In its first period, this institution was in harmony with the Foreign Office's objectives, but it came to be led by the Spanish Embassy in London after World War II.

The history of the British-Spanish Society is a perfect example of how cultural strategies have played a key role in foreign policy since the early 20th Century. Undoubtedly the Instituto Cervantes, the British Council and the Institut Français have contributed, and are still contributing, to international affairs. These institutions not only promote the teaching of modern foreign languages but also bring different worlds together, pursuing diplomatic objectives which no one would have expected. Although many variables have prevented us from making an appropriate comparison, associations like the Anglo-Spanish Society set a precedent in the usage of culture in international relations.

Today, states have modified their foreign policies, including a wide range of strategies in line with a globalised world. Governments have become aware of the importance of culture in diplomatic relations and have used it to intervene in foreign affairs. Many countries have institutions which are designed to strengthen their own national images abroad. However, from the beginning, the Anglo-Spanish Society was promoted by the UK Foreign Office and, while many members were Spanish and Latin-American, it was under British control.

As previously mentioned, a group of British academics, businessmen and politicians created the Anglo-Spanish Society to reach several commercial and strategic objectives during the Great War. However, this association only partly met these objectives; it intended to counteract German influence on Spanish public opinion, but it had a limited impact on Spain. The Society also pursued the improvement of British trade with Spanish-American countries. It was believed that the wider learning of Spanish in Great Britain should be encouraged and that a better knowledge of this language would help British companies to do business with Latin America.

En 1973, Hugh Ellis-Rees abandonaba la presidencia de la asociación, que había alcanzado cierta estabilidad durante la última década. Corrían vientos favorables, ya que los cambios políticos que en ese momento se perfilaban en España iban a facilitar la labor de la institución. Y es que el final del régimen de Franco trajo consigo una coyuntura más propicia para el desarrollo de las relaciones hispano-británicas. Por un lado, la transición española a la democracia fue vista con buenos ojos por la opinión pública del Reino Unido. Por el otro, los servicios diplomáticos españoles se adaptaron a las nuevas circunstancias, renovando parcialmente su personal. Al morir el dictador, el entonces embajador español en Londres, Manuel Fraga Iribarne, regresó a Madrid para asumir responsabilidades de gobierno, siendo remplazado interinamente por su tocayo Manuel Gómez Acebo. A partir de 1976, el aristócrata Luis Guillermo de Perinat se puso al frente de la Embajada para afrontar el reto de transformación que los tiempos exigían. En este contexto, la sociedad continuó progresando con firmeza.

Antes de la muerte de Franco, ya se había producido un relevo en la presidencia de la Anglo-Spanish Society. Un químico y escritor inglés, Peter Christopher Allen, fue el elegido para tomar el timón. Su interés por España había sido fomentado por su segunda esposa, Consuelo Linares, con la que contrajo matrimonio en 1952. Además de acercar a su marido a la cultura española, esta mujer también fue miembro del comité ejecutivo de la asociación y su participación en los proyectos para mejorar las relaciones bilaterales fue tan destacada como la de su marido. Sin ir más lejos, en 1978 la labor de Linares Rivas fue reconocida por el rey Juan Carlos I, quien le otorgó “El Lazo de Dama de la Orden de Isabel la Católica” por su contribución a la amistad entre ambos países. Igual honor fue concedido a otras españolas residentes en Londres como Mabel Marañón y Blanca Tomé de Lago.

Podría decirse que la asociación compartió el espíritu transformador que recorrió España después del óbito del dictador. Algunos de los miembros más veteranos creyeron que era una buena oportunidad para retirarse y dejar paso a las nuevas generaciones.