Spanish Politics and Society
Hispanic & European Studies Program
Fall 2009
Raimundo Viejo Viñas
Office 20.182
www.raimundoviejo.info
raimundo.viejo@upf.edu
Institutions of Spanish
Democracy, 1
The Spanish mass media as
political actors
Historical background, 1
 The origin of newspapers is linked to the
development of capitalists societies.
 First newspapers were just a piece of paper with
some basic informations relating to maritime traffic
(The Gazette of Amsterdam)
 In Mediterranean countries, however, the
development of a modern public opinion was not
protagonized by a revolutionary, bourgeois class,
but by the aristocracy
 The media developed more as a cultural hegemonic
institution than as a pluralist market of free ideas
Historical background, 2
 Both dictatorships of Primo de Rivera (1923-1931)
and Franco (1936/39-1975) hindered the formation of
mass political parties and party press
 During the first period of Franco’s dictatorship, the
media were merely a propaganda tool of the
totalitarian regime
 In the 1960s and early 1970s things begin to change,
and the Catholic media became more influent.
 By the times of the transition to democracy, a
pluralistic public opinion was finally formed in Spain
The Spanish Press today
 In the 1970s and 1980s emerged a new democratic
press oriented to the market (El País, Diario 16, or El
Periòdic de Catalunya)
 As a result of their historical background, newspapers in
Spain are today a mixed product:

On the one hand, they focus on political issues in a very
ideological manner

On the other hand, they are also interested on social,
economic, and cultural issues
 The succes of democratization explains that Spain and
Portugal were among the only countries in the world with
increases in newspaper circulation during the 1990s
The sociological dimension of the
Press
 Newspapers in Spain have relatively minoritarian
audiences. Only people with a higher education level
read the newspapers daily
 Most of daily newspapers’ readers are male (47%) while
women remain excluded from the public sphere. In fact,
only a 26% of the Spanish women read the newspapers
daily.
 There is also a poor quality press focused on gender
roles both for men (Sport dailies like Marca, As, etc.)
and women (the so-called “prensa del corazón”: Hola,
Lecturas, etc.)
Press and Politics
 The Spanish press is strongly politized: newspapers
tend to represent the different political tendencies and
to express more or less explicitly support to political
parties or party factions
 Some examples of newspapers’ political orientation:






Gara: left (pro-ETA)
Público: center-left (pro-Zapatero)
El País: center (in the 1980s pro-PSOE, now critic and
pro Ruiz Gallardón –PP’s major of Madrid)
La vanguardia: center-right (pro conservative catalan
nationalism)
El Mundo: center-right (pro PP)
La Razón: right (pro monarchic, pro Church)
Spanish TV
 TVE (Televisión Española, today “La primera”) was the
first TV channel (1956)
 Ten years later, a second public channel was founded
(TVE2, today “la 2”). Both channels, TVE and TVE2
were strictly controlled by Franco’s rule
 During the transition to democracy and the first years
of democratic rule, however, television was always
controlled by the government
 In the 1980, as a result of the decentralisation
process, three new channels were created, but also
following the public television pattern: ETB (Basque),
TV3 (Catalan) and TVG (Galician)
Private Television
 In 1989 the Spanish government will liberalize the
audiovisual landscape. At the same time the executive
will also give up direct control of public television.
 Three new, private channels began to broadcast:
Antena 3, Telecinco and Canal + (today Cuatro)
 The last phase of television liberalization takes place
today with the Terrestrial Digital Television
 The decentralisation process iniciated by the Catalan,
Basque, and Galician televisions, also continues with
the creation of the regional and local televisions
(whether they are public or private)
Political orientations

Like the Press, TV channels in Spain also are strongly
politicized

La primera and La2 tend to justify governmental political
positions, even if La primera is more conservative than La2

Antena 3 is a very conservative (like Fox in the U.S.)

Telecinco is also conservative (it partially belongs to
Berlusconi)

Cuatro (before Canal +) is center (it belongs to the PRISA
group, like El País)

LaSexta is center-left (it belongs, among others, to
Zapatero’s friend, the catalan Jaume Roures)
New media
 The internet has also impacted
significantly on the configuration of
the Spanish public opinion
 The