Bank system and mass media in the spanish transition and democratic consolidation (1975-1989)

Abstract

Did Spanish banks control, through corporate ownership, the media during the Spanish Transition? Through the analysis of 444 shareholders and/or directors of the main journalistic companies, this article shows the connections produced between the shareholders of the media and the banking system between 1975 and 1989. It’s a relevant historical context when addressing the process of liberal democratization in Spain, in which the media regained normative freedom from 1978 and in which the Spanish economy progressively abandoned Franco’s interventionism. At the same time that there are dynamics of concentration of capital, which in the financial sector are visible in the group of the seven big Spanish banks, the media are also immersed in this inertia, behaving as one more productive industry, even to the detriment of the loss of independence at a time as important as the arrival of democracy in the country.