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Spain Mass Communications
Newspapers and Periodicals
Under the rigorous censorship that prevailed during the
Franco regime, only news favorable to the government could
appear
in the press, and there was little concern for the
veracity of
such reports. With no reliable coverage of political
events,
reportage diminished to a few items pertaining to society
news,
sports, or business.
A new press law, approved in 1966, provided a degree of
liberalization for publications and eliminated prior
censorship,
although newspapers were expected to exercise
self-censorship.
The 1966 law did not usher in freedom of the press, but it
did
expand the scope of news that could be published;
newspapers even
began debating what forms of government might evolve after
Franco's death.
Although the 1978 Constitution guarantees the right to
disseminate information, as of mid-1988 the 1966 press law
had
not been replaced, and regulations dating from the Franco
years
had been used in attempts to control journalists who
published
articles offensive to the government. In addition, some
observers
believed that government subsidies to the press, beginning
in
1979, threatened to compromise true freedom of the press.
The early post-Franco years witnessed a proliferation
of
newspapers and magazines, although many of these were
short
lived. The enthusiasm for publishing was not matched by a
commensurate eagerness for reading on the part of the
populace.
In part because of the prolonged repression of the
dictatorship,
Spaniards had lost the habit of reading newspapers.
Whereas about
2,000 newspapers had appeared daily during the Second
Republic,
in the 1980s there were only 130 (see
table 15, Appendix).
This
drastically reduced figure was an indication of the
population's
distrust of the press, although the growth of radio and
television newscasts was also a factor. Spain's per capita
newspaper circulation was far below that of most West
European
countries, and in the late 1980s less than 10 percent of
the
population regularly bought a daily newspaper.
By all accounts, the most influential newspaper was
El
Pais, founded in 1976. It played a critical role in
guiding
the formation of opinion in the early days of Spanish
democracy.
The paper maintained a liberal, factually objective
viewpoint,
and it appealed primarily to well-educated citizens. In
the mid1980s , it was the country's largest daily newspaper, with
a
circulation of 350,000 daily and 590,000 on Sundays.
The much older ABC was a conservative-monarchist
newspaper. Founded in 1905, it enjoyed wide popularity
during the
Franco years, but its circulation declined after 1975.
El
Alcazar represented ultra-right wing opposition to
democratic
policies. Many of its articles pertained to the armed
forces,
because it appealed to a sector of society still nostalgic
for
Francoism. The oldest continuously published newspaper in
Spain
was La Vanguardia, founded in 1881 and published in
Barcelona. Until the early 1980s, this conservative paper
had the
largest circulation in the country.
Other major daily newspapers included the Catholic
rightist
Ya, which strongly defended the church's position
on such
issues as divorce and abortion, and Diario 16,
which began
publication in 1975 as a spinoff of the respected weekly,
Cambio 16. Marca was a popular daily
newspaper,
devoted exclusively to sports news. Founded in the early
days of
the Franco regime, it enjoyed immense popularity between
1940 and
1970, primarily because sports coverage was the only
uncensored
news permitted by the government. There were also a number
of
important regional newspapers in Catalonia (Avui)
and in
the Basque Country (Deia in Bilbao and Egin
in San
Sebastian) that published, at least partly, in the
respective
regional language; the circulation of each usually ran
between
40,000 and 50,000 daily.
One large news agency, EFE, dominated the distribution
of
news. This national agency, which the government owned and
subsidized, was controlled by the Ministry of
Transportation,
Tourism, and Communications. The government frequently
exercised
its prerogative of appointing EFE directors. At the same
time,
financial aid from the state contributed to the
significant
growth of the agency. Observers questioned the
appropriateness of
newspapers' receiving their information from an agency so
closely
linked with the government.
In addition to newspapers, Spain had a large number of
weekly
and monthly periodicals that filled in the gaps in
newspaper
coverage. Two leading weeklies specialized in political
reporting: Cambio 16, founded in 1972; and its more
recent, somewhat sensationalist rival, Tiempo.
Other
periodicals for the most part concentrated on
entertainment,
social events, sports, and television. One of the most
popular
magazines in Spain, Interviu, combined unrestrained
political reporting with equally uninhibited photography.
This
blending of political and sexual liberation proved highly
attractive to Spanish readers, after Franco's repressive
policies
in both these areas. The best-selling magazine in Spain
was the
weekly television review Tele-Indiscreta, the large
circulation of which indicated the immense popularity of
television throughout the country.
Data as of December 1988
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