Speak the Culture: Spain: Be Fluent in Spanish Life and Culture

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1. Identity: the
   building blocks of
   2. Literature
   and philosophy
   3. Art and
   architecture
   4. Performing
   arts
   5. Cinema
   and fashion
   6. Media and
   communications
   7. Food and drink 8. Living culture:
   the details of

Reading habits

The Spanish don’t buy many newspapers. Only about

one in ten actually buys a paper each day; around half

the number of most Western nations. However, they’re

a sociable bunch so, once sharing is taken into account,

about one in every three Spaniards actually reads a daily

rag. Readership levels seem to vary wildly between the

regions. For example, the bookish folk of Navarre are

almost four times more likely to buy a daily paper than

people in Castile.

Sports papers and the rise of the freebies

Sports papers likeMarcaandDiario ASare hugely

popular in Spain. Although most column inches are

consumed by football, they cover everything from

Formula One to basketball, often rivalling the circulation

figures of leading news-based dailies likeEl País. In

terms of copies shifted,Marcais actually the second

most popular daily paper in Spain. However, taking the

single biggest chunk out of the daily newspaper market

are the free papers, distributed at railway stations, on

city streets and on metro systems. In 2005 the World

Association of Newspapers estimated their share of the

daily market in Spain at 51 per cent.20 minutos, with

multiple editions published in different cities and online,

seems to be the leading player at present.

Territorial animals: Spain’s regional press

The primacy of the regional press is another factor of

the Spanish newspaper industry. While the biggest

dailies –El País,ABCetc – are based in Madrid, regional

newspapers can still have a strong national influence

when sold outside their own territory. In most parts

of Spain the main regional newspaper tops the daily

The limits of freedom
While the tight
censorship of Franco’s
era is long gone, some
subjects – usually royal

• simply remain too far
  beyond the pale. In July
  2007, a Madrid judge
  ordered copies of the
  satirical magazineEl
  Juevesto be removed
  from newsagents as they
  contained a cartoon of
  Prince Felipe, heir to the
  Spanish throne, in a
  sexually explicit pose
  with his wife, Princess
  Letizia. The cartoon,
  drawing attention to a
  government plan for
  giving parents€2,500
  for newborns, had Felipe
  pondering to his wife,
  kneeling in front of him:
  “Just imagine if you end
  up pregnant...This will
  be the closest thing to
  work I’ve ever done in
  my life.” Most of Spain’s
  media decried the
  decision to remove
  the mags. The two
  cartoonists involved
  were later fined€3,000
  each.