This country report summarises EurOMo findings for 2020 and addresses relevant changes up until 15th July 2022. The Spanish media outlet sample consists of (1) the five most-viewed TV stations and (2) the four most-heard radios, (3) the five most-read print newspapers, (4) the four most-read digital native newspapers, and the website equivalent of the selected TV stations, radios and print newspapers. All selected media outlets (cf. Table 1) have a national scope. The readership and consumption data correspond to 2020. All media outlets except La Vanguardia and lavanguardia.com, which are edited in Barcelona, are edited in Madrid. The sample includes public service media (TVE1, RNE and rtve.es) and private media outlets (the rest).
Table 1. Spanish sample of media outlets (n=31)
| TV, radio, print, digital native | Equivalent online outlet. | |
|---|---|---|
| TV media outlets | Antena 3 | antena3.com |
| La Sexta | lasexta.com | |
| Tele 5 | telecinco.es | |
| Cuatro | cuatro.com | |
| TVE1 | rtve.es | |
| Radio media outlets | RNE | |
| SER | cadenaser.com | |
| Cope | cope.es | |
| Onda Cero | ondacero.es | |
| Print newspapers | El País | elpais.com |
| El Mundo | elmundo.es | |
| ABC | abc.es | |
| La Razón | larazon.es | |
| La Vanguardia | lavanguardia.com | |
| Digital native newspapers | elespanol.com | |
| elconfidencial.com | ||
| eldiario.es | ||
| huffingtonpost.es | ||
Fifteen outlet owners own the 31 selected media outlets. Below, these outlets are grouped according to their media group and direct owner or editor.
Five ownership patterns characterise the surveyed Spanish media outlets:
(1) 21 of the 31 surveyed media outlets account for complex or highly complex ownership structures.
Elespanol.com and the media outlets belonging to Grupo Vocento, Mediaset España, Atresmedia Corporación de Medios, BuzzFeed, Inc. and, especially, Grupo Prisa, account for complex ownership structures, with more than two ownership relations between the media outlet editing company and the outlet’s beneficial owners.
By contrast, in 9 media outlets (the three public service media; La Vanguardia, La Razón and their corresponding equivalent digital outlets; eldiario.es and elconfidencial.com) the media outlet’s beneficial owners directly or indirectly own the media’s editing company.
(2) Public service media, private media owned by companies or individuals, and media owned by the Catholic Church belong to Spain’s relevant media outlets.
Most media outlets (26) have natural or private legal owners as direct owners. The Spanish state owns three public service media outlets in the sample: TVE, RNE, rtve.es. The several public service media in Spain owned by regional governments are not in the sample. Third, the Spanish Episcopal Conference is the majority owner of the editing company of COPE and cope.es.
(3) Internationalised media ownership structures.
64 of the 130 (i.e., 49,6%) identified legal owners (cf. Table 2) have their seat outside Spain. These foreign legal owners have their seat in Germany, the USA, the UK, the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, Mexico, Norway, Ireland, Luxembourg, Singapore and New Zealand.
Table 2. Sample of identified direct and indirect owners of the selected media outlets
| Type of owner | Number | % of total |
|---|---|---|
| companies and foundations (legal owners) | 130 | 59,6% |
| individuals (natural owners) | 79 | 36,2% |
| free float of publicly traded companies | 9 | 4,1% |
| Total owners | 218 |
(4) Financialized media ownership structures.
As Table 2 outlines, 9 owners correspond to the free float of eight publicly traded companies. The publicly traded media companies in the sample have a lower number of free float shares than the publicly traded telecommunications corporation and the commercial banks (cf. Table 3).
Table 3. Legal owners with free float in their ownership structure.
Moreover, 73 of the 130 identified legal owners (56%) are financial actors, especially trusts, banks and management funds.
BBVA, Santander and HSBC, the investment fund of the Norwegian Central Bank and companies belonging to JP Goldman Sachs, Blackrock Inc., Invesco Ltd. and Credit Suisse some of them. Grupo Prisa is the group with the most complex, internationalised and financialized ownership structure.
(5) A scarce number of outlet owners and media managers are politically affiliated. Nevertheless, political parallelism in the Spanish media system is high.
Only 2 of the 79 natural owners in the sample are or have been elected politicians with manifest political affiliation. The Italian MEP for Forza Italia Silvio Berlusconi. Second, Emilio Ybarra Churruca, deputy mayor in Bilbao during the Francoist dictatorship.
6 further natural owners have an obvious but not acknowledged political affiliation because one of the following reasons: (1) they previously worked in press offices of parties or governments, (2) they have presented rallies of specific political parties, (3) have previously held positions of political appointment, or (4) they have publicly supported specific political parties (Pedro J. Ramírez wrote editorials asking to vote for the parties UPyD and PP, Félix Rodríguez supported Manuel Valls as mayor of Barcelona, and Carlos Slim supported the Mexican party PRI).
Nonetheless, media political parallelism is very high in Spain, although media support for specific parties is rarely explicitly expressed in the editorial line. Instead, there are cases of strong entanglement between media and parties. Francisco Marhuenda, La Razón director, is a former head of a PP-led cabinet. There are also state manoeuvres supported by specific media (e.g. Antonio Ferreras, manager of La Sexta, collaborated to spread false information against Podemos). Last, journalists-commentators present in political comment radio and TV programmes are often designated by the political parties.
Media outlet beneficial owners. In all cases but one (eldiario.es), the media outlets do not inform about their beneficial owners in the publication and website. The beneficial owners of the above-mentioned media groups are often extremely difficult to ascertain due to (1) the complex ownership structure and (2) lack of financial data.
Editorial staff of the media outlets. Only three media outlets, El Mundo & elmundo.es —both outlets share newsroom— and eldiario.es, inform about the specific amount of editorial staff.
Annual and financial accounts of legal owners. Only a minority of legal owners (from Spain or other countries) publish in their website their unconsolidated accounts (for the specific company) or consolidated accounts (for the group of companies to which the company belongs).
The Spanish legal owners (64 of the 130 legal owners, i.e. 49,6%) must yearly report information about their companies to the Spanish Commercial Register (Registro Mercantil). Further, publicly traded companies in Spain must provide financial reports to the Spanish Competition Authority (CNMV). The financial reports submitted to the CNMV are freely available online and report the company’s owners, their shares and voting rights, among others.
Further, the annual reports submitted to the Spanish Commercial Register are only available as print copies to be bought in the Commercial Register or through other private services that summarise some data or sell the companies’ annual accounts. In these annual accounts, the companies do not need to report changes in the ownership structure nor the subsidies from public authorities.
The foreign legal owners (50,6% of the total) are not bound by the Spanish regulation but by those of their country of residence (cf. above). Except for the Mexican companies (in Mexico, Spanish is official), none of the other foreign companies are obliged to publish their financial accounts in at least one of Spain’s official languages.
Information about subsidies and income through public advertising is, in most cases, not available. Information about the legal owners’ revenue in 2020 and the staff is in most cases available. By contrast, the detailed amount of public subsidies and of public funding through advertising is, in most cases, missing.
Nonetheless, the Spanish government provides aggregated information about the amount of total public aid received by the Spanish and foreign legal owners. The Spanish government informs whether companies and organisations received in 2020 less or more than 100.000€ in total public aid and reports the total amount of public aid for the companies having received more than 100.000€. The concept of public aid includes among others subsidies and income in public advertising.
The main risks concern (1) the identification of the media beneficial owners, (2) the editorial staff of the outlets, (2) the general availability and accessibility of annual and financial accounts, (2) the general lack of transparency concerning each legal owner’s specific amount of subsidies and public advertising.
The sample of relevant digital intermediaries in Spain comprises Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Messenger, Telegram, Google Discover, Apple News, Upday, Flipboard, Facebook.
Few of these digital intermediaries have agreements with other platforms:
In 2022,
According to AIMC data, at least 5% of respondents consumed the following non-linear distributors consumed during a 30-day period in 2019 or 2020: Netflix (2019: 37.2% and 2020: 57,5%), Amazon Prime Video (26.2% and 50.2%), Movistar+ (36.0% & 35.0%), Disney+ (-; 20%) HBO (14.6% and 16.6%), Vodafone TV (11.3% and 9.1%), Orange TV 5.8% and 7.3%), Dazn (3.1% and 8.4%) Filmin (1.0% and 5.1%). According to VOD Analytics, the non-linear distributors most used by Spanish citizens 16 years old or older are Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, HBO and Disney+.
No information is available concerning the possibility of specific commercial arrangements influencing content curation.
The legal framework sample for Spain includes fifteen media laws – three national and twelve regional laws. The regional laws cover 11 of the 17 Autonomous Communities of Spain (Andalusia, Basque Country, Catalonia, Cantabria, Extremadura, Galicia, Castilla-La Mancha, Castilla y León, Madrid, Murcia and Valencia).
In Spain, two agencies are related to the regulation of the audiovisual market. First, the CNMV is responsible for supervising the Spanish markets and the activity of those involved in them, including the audiovisual market. Second, the National Commission for Markets and Competition (henceforth, CNMC) is in charge of the correct functioning, transparency and existence of effective competition in all markets and productive sectors for the benefit of consumers and users and depends on the government. The law on the creation of the CNMC, in particular Chapter 2, Article 9, related to the supervision and control of the audiovisual communication market, regulates the ownership and financial transparency of the audiovisual market.
The Article 5 of the European Directive 2018/1808 has not been transposed in Spain: all relevant laws until 15th of May 2022 surveyed have been passed or ammended in 2018 or before. Nonetheless, the new General Law on Audiovisual Communication of May 26, 2022, which became effective on July 8, 2022 transposes this directive’s Article 5. The law has not been considered in the analysis focused on the situation until 15 May 2022.
In Spain, there is no national regulatory agency for the media system. Three regions (Andalusia, Catalonia and Valencia) have media regulatory agencies (henceforth, the three regional media RAs). In some database indicators, the result is “no NRA” but the media authorities’ responsibilities lie with the three regional authorities, which affect a territory corresponding to 44.84% of Spain’s population.
Four of the seventeen laws regulate transparency in media ownership and control. Two regulate ownership and control country-wide (the General Law on Audiovisual Communication and the Law on state-owned radio and television), and one in Andalusia (the Audiovisual Law of Andalusia) and one in Catalonia (the Audiovisual Communication Law of Catalonia). Further, Chapter 2, Article 9 of the law on the creation of the CNMC regulates transparency in media ownership and control. This article’s purpose is to control and supervise the compliance of the obligations concerning the transparency of the ownership regime of the Spain-wide providers of the audiovisual services.
The project’s normative expectations are four. (1) The need to disclose information upwards to the government and authorities. (2) The need to disclose information downwards, to the citizens and civil society. (3) The CoE recommends to “improve the transparency of the processes of online distribution of media content, including automated processes” to make clear who decides the (news) content available (Council of Europe, 2018, Appendix, para. 2.5). (4) The need to fulfil paragraphs 1 and 2 the Art. 5 of the EU Directive 2018/1808. These refer to the need to disclose ownership information.
The main risks in Spain are:
Country report published in September 2022
The EurOMo is a pilot project co-funded by the European Commission to monitor media ownership transparency in Europe. It is operated by a consortium of higher education institutions (HEIs) and research institutes, coordinated by the University of Salzburg.
Prof. Josef Trappel
[email protected], +43 8044 4167
Dr. Tales Tomaz
[email protected], +43 8044 4195
Dept. of Communication Studies
University of Salzburg
Rudolfskai 42, 5020 Salzburg, Austria
