The history of the Spanish press, understood more as a positivist study of the historical archive of periodicals than as a history of journalism or communications, began around the 15th or 16th centuries in a scattered fashion with manuscripts and the woodcut printing of relaciones de sucesos.English: news pamphlets Shortly after, the invention of the printing press brought the printing of the first gazettes, although the beginning of journalism in Spain is usually considered to be 1661, the year of the appearance of the Gazeta de Madrid or ,English: Madrid Gazette, which would be replaced in 1936 by the Boletín Oficial del Estado (BOE) or the Official State Gazette From then on, the so-called "old journalism" would develop until 1789, characterized by the dominance of the State. In the 19th century, the business press began to appear, competing with the workers' press and the partisan press, all of which suffered a crisis from 1898 onwards, culminating in the disappearance of numerous newspapers at the beginning of the Civil War. Once democracy was restored after the 1978 Constitution, big media companies completely took over Spanish newspapers.
Up until the 17th century
The history of journalism in Spain begins with the Romances noticieros,English: news-bearing ballads which reported the events of the Granada War in the 15th century. In the 16th century, xylography or wood engraving allowed for the mass and inexpensive publication of all kinds of brief writings. Thus began the publication of relaciones de sucesos by people paid by a municipal council to write, in an adorned manuscript, a report or record of any religious festivity, inauguration, important visit, commemoration, celebration, or memorable event to serve as a memento for the inhabitants, as well as ,English: announcements; Italian: avviso, plural: avvisiEnglish: : Handwritten sheets with various news, that were sent more or less regularly to paying customers. They are called by the name given to them in Venice, Italy. which were handwritten reports also paid for and sent from time to time to nobles who wished to be informed of any important event that took place in the Court during their enforced absence.
News reporting began with handwritten letters about the events of the conquest of Granada and continued with reports related to the New World, when pamphlets were printed on the first victories of the Spanish conquerors in the Americas. Perhaps the first relacioneroEnglish: news pamphleteer was humanist Peter Martyr d'Anghiera, who between 1488 and 1526 wrote no fewer than 812 letters that incorporated many news elements. This type of news correspondent was relatively frequent in the courts during the 17th century, and the notices written by , , or José Pellicer de Ossau Salas y Tovar have been preserved. The news agencies of the time were places called mentiderosEnglish: rumor mills in the Court: Gradas de San FelipeEnglish: Steps of San Felipe—the stairs of the now-defunct Convento de San Felipe el Real next to the Puerta del Sol—which specialized in military affairs and weapons expertise, and was very close to the street, where couriers arrived carrying the news; Losas de PalacioEnglish: The Palace Flagstones—next to the now-defunct Royal Alcázar of Madrid—where news about the king, the royal family, and nobility were shared; and Representantes,English: Representatives where theater people used to gather: artists, actors, poets, and writers, located at the confluence of the and streets. That is why the men of letters of the time, such as Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Góngora, or Quevedo looked for houses nearby to live in.
It was also around this time that the mercuriosEnglish: lit. mercuries (referring to Mercury, the messenger of the gods in Roman mythology) or gacetasEnglish: gazettes started to appear, a sort of bulletin that reported on the news of important trade fairs or ports with heavy traffic. In 1625, Avisos de Italia, Flandes, Roma, Portugal y otras partes appeared in Seville from 28 July to 3 August, and in 1641, Jaume Romeu published a translation of the Gazette de France from the French into Catalan–Gaseta vinguda a esta ciutat de Barcelona, per l’ordinari de París, vui a 28 de maig, any 1641. Traduïda del francès en nostra llengua catalana.—English: Gazette brought to this city of Barcelona, by stagecoach from Paris, this day May 28th 1641. Translated from the French into our Catalan language. which can be considered the first weekly publication to appear in the Iberian Peninsula.
Moreover, John Joseph of Austria, prime minister to Charles II, took an interest in the popularity and influence that such gazettes were acquiring in society and thus started to advertise himself by publishing gazettes. He saw in this medium a way to cement his position and satisfy his interests and, for this purpose, he hired , the first known Spanish gazetteer, to write and print the first Spanish gazette in 1661, the Relación o gaceta de algunos casos particulares, así políticos como militares, sucedidos en la mayor parte del mundo, published once a month, although in Zaragoza it continued as a weekly publication in 1676.
But the death of John Joseph of Austria and revenge by his enemies put the publication on hold for a while. It was resumed, however, under the title of Gaceta Ordinaria de Madrid, although Fabro already had a competitor: the Nuevas Ordinarias by . In 1697, after Fabro's death, his newspaper continued to be published without interruption as the Gazeta de Madrid or and, with an occasional change of title, it continues to be printed today as the Boletín Oficial del Estado. On the other hand, it is worthy of note that newspapers in Spanish were not only published in Spain; thus, it should come as no surprise that the oldest known Jewish newspaper is the Gazeta de Ámsterdam, published in Spanish between 1675 and 1690 for the Spanish-Portuguese people that arrived in the Netherlands, although there was a distinct lack of news of Jewish interest.
18th century
Gazettes began to appear in all major cities throughout the 17th and 18th centuries and soon the contents grew more diversified and widespread, although at this time newspapers were very expensive and were only within the reach of a minority. However, it was undoubtedly one of the most important ways in which enlightened ideas and bourgeois ideology entered Spain. Taking into account that, at this time, 80 percent of the population was illiterate, readers of "periodical papers" were an enlightened minority composed of nobles and clergymen, members of the royal bureaucracy, army officers, and some sectors of the middle class such as doctors, lawyers, professors, and merchants.
During the eighteenth century, three periods stood out: Between 1737 and 1750: the consolidation of the press in Spain, with the appearance of the first newspapers, such as . Between 1750 and 1770: the time of maturity and specialization, such as the . Starting in 1770: the time of decadence; although some interesting publications were born in 1774, linked to the boom set forth by Pedro Rodríguez de Campomanes of the Sociedades Económicas de Amigos del País,English: Economic Societies of Friends of the Country many publications disappeared due to political events and the situation abroad (the French Revolution).
Two types of publications were clearly distinguished: the educated press (periodicals) and the popular press (almanacs and forecasts).
The educated press or periodicals were printed with the permission of the Council of Castile and were subject to ecclesiastical censorship. They could be bought in bookstores or street stalls or be read in cafés, and they were sold by the blind, who had a monopoly on their distribution.
Political and military information was in the hands of two official newspapers: Gaceta de Madrid and . Private publications mainly dealt with cultural or economic issues. They almost always supported an advanced ideology and their readers were an enlightened and bourgeois minority.
The execution of the French royal family led to an increase in censorship and the temporary suspension of the press: on 24 February 1791, King Charles IV of Spain banned the publication of all press materials except official newspapers.
But the bourgeoisie also created popular publications that, already existing in the 17th century, evolved throughout the 18th century: almanacs and forecasts. These were illustrated booklets with engravings that were distributed by the thousands in towns and cities and offered, under the guise of reporting on the weather, the most varied contents: apart from the meteorological forecast for the year, they included data on the phases of the moon, thoughts, standards of conduct, and instructions and teachings on the most varied trades. They attracted the attention of the public with sensationalist titles and had two sections: La introducción al Juicio del año, a prediction of what was going to happen that year according to the stars, and El Juicio del año, a sort of star chart by seasons, months, and days. They are valuable today because they represent a compilation of popular culture and a way of spreading bourgeois values among the lower classes. But their dangerous nature led Charles III of Spain to prohibit their publication in 1767 on the pretext that they were vain and useless reading materials for the people. These publications did not disappear in the nineteenth century, but their purpose changed since the bourgeoisie had a much more effective and direct means for spreading their ideas: popular newspapers. The most famous almanacs were those of Diego de Torres Villarroel, who revived and updated the genre with his Ramillete de astros (1718) by turning the Juicio del año into a fictitious narrative in which fantastical characters made the prediction, taking advantage of the opportunity to insert descriptions, monologues, and other varied materials.
(1737) was a cultural and literary publication that lasted until 1742. It fought against baroque ideas and supported the work of Benito Jerónimo Feijóo y Montenegro and Ignacio de Luzán. Its purpose was emitir un juicio ecuánime sobre todos los libros que se publiquen en España.English: To issue an impartial judgment on all books published in Spain It had 400 pages, in book format, cost 4 to 5 reales, and had a print run of between 1,000 and 1,500 copies in circulation. Juan de Iriarte and other scholars of the time wrote for it. It was formed by a group of "well-known writers, desirous of reforming (...) the decadent literature of the eighteenth century" who "published a kind of magazine, which merited the protection of Philip IV (...)." It was modeled after the Parisian Journal de Savants.
In 1738, Salvador José Mañer started translating the Mercurio Histórico y Político from the French. Then, in his printed work in 1774, Juan de Iriarte criticized Mañer for his poor-quality translations. In 1784, already larger in size, its title was changed to Mercurio de España and it has been, with the exception of La Gaceta and El Diario de Madrid, the newspaper that has survived the longest.