Excellence, uniqueness and elites : Constructing Spain through nation branding on the website Marca España

One of the most interesting approaches on how we perceive nations today is the idea of imagining nations as brands. Nation branding is used by many governments as a tool for the dissemination of a certain nation imagery. From a media approach, this thesis explores the notion of nation branding as ideologically loaded in media discourse, and the official web discourse on Spain serves as a case. Specifically, the thesis reveals the media construction of Spain on the official website marcaespana.es, exploring its relation to national identities and the underlying ideologies behind the online selfrepresentation. The thesis draws on the concepts of nation, national identities, ideology and discourse, relating them to nation branding from a critical perspective. To do so, the thesis employs Critical Discourse Analysis as method for analyzing national narratives, where nation branding discourse is seen as a social practice that legitimizes certain ideologies and power relations. The study concludes that the Spanish construction, portraying Spain as unique and united, reduces its national identity to an excellence and elite discourse, ignoring the complex reality of the nation. The thesis shows how this way of constructing the nation serves, through a website, to legitimize the current economical and political system, including the current government and the Spanish nationalism.