Media Policy in Spain: Public Service, Free Competition, and Some Internal Diversity

Spain is a young democracy compared with other European long-established regimes, as the Constitution drafted after Francisco Franco’s dictatorship dates from 1978. Territorially, the country is divided into 17 decentralised entities called Comunidades Autonomas (Autonomous Communities), which have their own basic political norms: the Autonomy Statutes (Estatutos de Autonomia). In order to understand the evolution of Spanish media policies and the state of the art today, it is essential to bear in mind the weight of the historical heritage on the current structure of the media, both public and private.’ Also, and more comprehensively compared with the factors which have just been mentioned, control by and dependence on dominant political parties have marked the changing media landscape and continue to mark it, in more or less subtle ways, such as in the management of public broadcasters (both at central and regional levels, and more in the latter than in the former). The lack of total autonomy and independence of the mass media from political parties and the government is further sustained by the configuration of media policies, since no real measures are adopted in order to clearly foster media independence (Diaz Nosty, 2005: 250). Notwithstanding this, current changes are occurring in the Spanish media system, essentially due to the new Statute on Audiovisual Communication2 (Ley General de la Comunicacion Audiovisual, LGCA) and pressures from interest groups that demand a reform of the old standards.