press

   History

   After the Civil War, Franco decreed the expropriation of all newspapers owned or run by parties, unions or individuals with Republican sympathies, and by 1940 they had all become the property of the National Movement, the only legal political party in Franco's Spain. Thus the Madrid daily El Sol became the Falange newspaper Arriba, and many provincial newspapers of liberal leanings became mouthpieces for fascism. New titles were also added, notably the organ of the vertical syndicates (Falangist-inspired unions), Pueblo, a Madrid evening paper. In all, some forty titles made up the state-owned stake in the newspaper industry, including the bigger of Spain's two news agencies, Agencia EFE. The only titles in the private sector were mostly Catholic (e.g. Ya) and monarchist (e.g. ABC). Censorship and strict government control of the written press was relaxed slightly in 1966, when a Press Law was passed by Manuel Fraga Iribarne, then Minister of Information. The law, although restrictive by western standards and very unpopular in its day, gave newspaper editors a greater degree of freedom: restrictions on criticism of the principles of the National Movement or political institutions or leaders still remained, but the concept of adherence to "truth and morals" allowed for a certain flexibility in interpretation. Until the 1970s, most of the governmentcontrolled newspapers were profitable or required only small subsidies, but by the end of Franco's regime (1975), their circulation had plummeted and they became a serious financial liability as well as a political embarrassment to successive governments of the democratic transition. The 1975 watershed marked the appearance of new general dailies: El País and Diario 16 (Madrid), and El Periódico de Catalunya (Barcelona). There are marked differences between these newspapers and those which were published under the dictatorship: the new papers have liberal leanings and a cleaner, more modern look whereas the old ones are more conservative and retain antiquated methods of presentation. Also, several non-Castilian language dailies appeared, notably Avui (written entirely in Catalan), and Deia and Egin (written partly in Basque). By the late 1970s, a series of economic crises (paper prices, heavy losses in advertising and circulation revenue) affected the industry badly, particularly the wellestablished, traditional titles, which had been losing ground steadily to the newcomers. An exception to this was probably the ultra right-wing El Alcázar, whose circulation (largely among the armed forces) trebled and peaked in the early 1980s, though it closed in the early 1990s. In 1981, the centre-right UCD government passed a bill authorizing the auction of the bulk of the Movimiento titles to the private sector. Later, successive socialist administrations sold off the remainder, mainly to local businessmen and institutions. From the mid-1980s, Spain's daily press has undergone a process of technological modernization, partly aided by financial support from the administration, which subsidized some initiatives and developed a joint programme to encourage readership among students. The next strategy was internationalization. Many of the larger circulation papers own shares or have agreements involving the exchange of news with the foreign press and no fewer than a dozen newspapers, including most notably ABC, La Vanguardia and El País, have established a strong presence in the Internet.

   The daily press

   One of the most salient features of the Spanish written media is the low circulation of the daily press. However, in spite of the fact that only one in ten people buy a daily paper, 25 percent of the country's citizens read the daily press. The explanation for this lies in the Spanish habit of sharing reading matter, particularly in public and social venues, such as bars, cafés and clubs, in the absence of a "popular" British tabloid-style press, and in the perception that newspaper reading is essentially a middle-class habit. The profession is indeed dominated by middleclass intellectuals, who have been unable to create products that would appeal to the working class, as shown by the unsuccesful ventures of dailies such as Diario Libre in 1978. El Periódico de Catalunya and Diario 16, which purport to fit into this market, largely because of their larger headlines and abundance of photographs, have been successful because their news coverage is essentially still "serious", with political and economic news taking precedence over stories of crimes, the lives of celebrities or scandals. Spaniards prefer to read about these issues in weekly or fortnightly glossy publications, which enjoy much popular acclaim and high profits, plugging the coverage gaps left by the newspaper industry. In Spain, there are some 155 dailies, the majority of which are local or regional. The daily papers, which increased their circulation by two and a half million from 1989 to 1994, were able to maintain these readership figures for the Monday to Friday editions throughout 1994, while registering a sharp rise in demand for the weekend editions. The organization which controls and monitors the readership of the written media (96 percent of newspapers, 90 percent of the largecirculation magazines and 52 percent of technical and professional publications) is the Oficina de Justificación de la Difusión (OJD) (Circulation Audit Office). It is the only reliable source uniformly respected by advertisers and media professionals. According to their figures for 1994, the leading national daily was the newspaper El País, with an average readership of 408,267 per day in 1994, an increase of just over 7,000 copies on the 1993 figure. In second place was ABC, with an average of 321,517 copies a day. The newspaper with the third largest readership in Spain was El Mundo, with a circulation of 268,748, followed by the Catalan dailies La Vanguardia (207,112) and El Periódico de Catalunya (193,576), although most of their readership is exclusively Catalan. The sales leaders, El País, ABC and El Mundo, are national dailies published in Madrid, although they publish regional editions in some of the autonomous communities.

   Readership of Sunday supplements is also led by El País Semanal (1,058,584 copies weekly, a record figure in the history of Spanish journalism), compared with 632,649 for Blanco y Negro (ABC), 436,242 for La Revista (El Mundo) and 338,629 for La Vanguardia. The OJD has also certified an average distribution of 11,170 copies for El País Internacional and 3,515 for ABC Internacional, which are sold worldwide mainly through subscription. The daily press also includes sports newspapers, noted for their very high readership. Among the ten most widely sold dailies, two papers are exclusively dedicated to sports, As and Marca. Another type of newspaper which has experienced great success is the economic journal. A large number of new publications devoted to this field appeared in the late 1980s and early 1990s, including dailies, and the most important national newspapers publish special supplements on economic issues.

   See also: media; press ownership

   RAMÓN PARRONDO