''El Mundo'' (; ), before ''El Mundo del Siglo Veintiuno'', is the second largest printed
daily newspaper
A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background.
Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, sports a ...
in Spain. The paper is considered one of the country's
newspapers of record
A newspaper of record is a major national newspaper with large circulation whose editorial and news-gathering functions are considered authoritative and independent; they are thus "newspapers of record by reputation" and include some of the o ...
along with ''
El País and
ABC
ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script known as the alphabet.
ABC or abc may also refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Broadcasting
* American Broadcasting Company, a commercial U.S. TV broadcaster
** Disney–ABC Television ...
.''
History and profile
''El Mundo'' was first published on 23 October 1989.
Perhaps the best known of its founders was
Pedro J. Ramírez, who served as editor until 2014.
Ramirez had risen to prominence as a journalist during the
Spanish transition to democracy.
The other founders,
Alfonso de Salas,
Balbino Fraga
José Balbino da Silva (born 23 March 1896 - deceased) was a Portuguese footballer
A football player or footballer is a sportsperson who plays one of the different types of football. The main types of football are association football, A ...
and Juan González, shared with Ramírez a background in Grupo 16, the publishers of the newspaper ''
Diario 16
''Diario 16'' (Spanish for "Daily 16" or "Newspaper 16") was a Spanish-language daily newspaper published in Madrid, Spain, between 1976 and 2001. The ''16'' of the title refers to the sixteen founders of Grupo 16, publishers of the weekly news m ...
''. Alfonso de Salas, Juan Gonzales and Gregorio Pena also launched ''
El Economista'' in 2006.
''El Mundo'', along with ''
Marca'' and ''
Expansión'', is controlled by the Italian publishing company
RCS MediaGroup
RCS MediaGroup S.p.A. (formerly Rizzoli-Corriere della Sera), based in Milan and listed on the Italian Stock Exchange, is an international multimedia publishing group that operates in daily newspapers, magazines and books, radio broadcasting, n ...
[ through its Spanish subsidiary company Unidad Editorial S.L. Its former owner was Unedisa which merged with Grupo Recoletos in 2007 to form Unidad Editorial, current owner of the paper.
The paper has its headquarters in ]Madrid
Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the second-largest city in the European Union (EU), and ...
,[ but maintains several news bureaus in other cities. The daily has a national edition and ten different regional editions, including those for ]Andalusia
Andalusia (, ; es, Andalucía ) is the southernmost autonomous community in Peninsular Spain. It is the most populous and the second-largest autonomous community in the country. It is officially recognised as a "historical nationality". The t ...
, Valencia
Valencia ( va, València) is the capital of the autonomous community of Valencia and the third-most populated municipality in Spain, with 791,413 inhabitants. It is also the capital of the province of the same name. The wider urban area al ...
, Castile and León, the Balearic Islands and Bilbao
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. It is published in tabloid format
A tabloid is a newspaper with a compact page size smaller than broadsheet. There is no standard size for this newspaper format.
Etymology
The word ''tabloid'' comes from the name given by the London-based pharmaceutical company Burroughs We ...
.
In 2005 ''El Mundo'' started a supplement for women, ''Yo Donna'', which was modelled on ''IO Donna
''IO Donna'' (Italian: ''Me Woman'') is a weekly women's magazine and Saturday supplement of the Italian daily newspaper ''Corriere della Sera''. The magazine is the first supplement of a daily which focuses on women readers. It is based in Milan ...
'', a supplement of the Italian
Italian(s) may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries
** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom
** Italian language, a Romance language
*** Regional Ita ...
daily '' Corriere della Sera''.
In January 2014 Pedro J. Ramírez, editor of the paper, was fired from his post. He argued that reporting on corruption scandals involving Spanish Prime Minister
The prime minister of Spain, officially president of the Government ( es, link=no, Presidente del Gobierno), is the head of government of Spain. The office was established in its current form by the Constitution of 1978 and it was first regula ...
Mariano Rajoy
Mariano Rajoy Brey (; born 27 March 1955) is a Spanish politician who served as Prime Minister of Spain from 2011 to 2018, when a vote of no confidence ousted his government. On 5 June 2018, he announced his resignation as People's Party lead ...
led to his sacking.[ Casimiro García-Abadillo served as editor until April 2015, when he was replaced in turn by David Jiménez.]
Editorial stance
Editorially, ''El Mundo'' often expresses the mainstream views of the centre-right
Centre-right politics lean to the right of the political spectrum, but are closer to the centre. From the 1780s to the 1880s, there was a shift in the Western world of social class structure and the economy, moving away from the nobility and ...
[ with ]independent
Independent or Independents may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups
* Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in the New Hope, Pennsylvania, area of the United States during the early 1930s
* Independ ...
and liberal
Liberal or liberalism may refer to:
Politics
* a supporter of liberalism
** Liberalism by country
* an adherent of a Liberal Party
* Liberalism (international relations)
* Sexually liberal feminism
* Social liberalism
Arts, entertainment and m ...
overtones.[https://www.adfcpadreanchieta.com/uploads/1/7/3/1/17311346/l%C3%ADnea_editorial_de_algunos_peri%C3%B3dicos_espa%C3%B1oles_revisada.pdf ]
El Mundo defines its editorial line as liberal
Liberal or liberalism may refer to:
Politics
* a supporter of liberalism
** Liberalism by country
* an adherent of a Liberal Party
* Liberalism (international relations)
* Sexually liberal feminism
* Social liberalism
Arts, entertainment and m ...
. It is usually critical of the left-wing
Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy. Left-wing politics typically involve a concern for those in soci ...
and peripheral nationalisms. Its current ideology is secular
Secularity, also the secular or secularness (from Latin ''saeculum'', "worldly" or "of a generation"), is the state of being unrelated or neutral in regards to religion. Anything that does not have an explicit reference to religion, either negativ ...
center-right. Among its columnists there is a remarkable heterogeneity and eclecticism, often openly critical of the editorial line itself. At the time it was decisive in the fall of Felipe González
Felipe González Márquez (; born 5 March 1942) is a Spanish lawyer, professor, and politician, who was the Secretary-General of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) from 1974 to 1997, and the 3rd Prime Minister of Spain since the ...
.[https://www.adfcpadreanchieta.com/uploads/1/7/3/1/17311346/l%C3%ADnea_editorial_de_algunos_peri%C3%B3dicos_espa%C3%B1oles_revisada.pdf ]
According to its ideological principles, “it aspires to be a progressive newspaper, committed to defending the current democratic system, public freedoms and human rights included in the Universal Declaration promulgated by the UN and in the European Convention of Human Rights
The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR; formally the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms) is an international convention to protect human rights and political freedoms in Europe. Drafted in 1950 by th ...
."
Political impact
''El Mundo'' has played a key role in uncovering a number of scandals, among them embezzlement by the commander of the Guardia Civil
The Civil Guard ( es, Guardia Civil, link=no; ) is the oldest law enforcement agency in Spain and is one of two national police forces. As a national gendarmerie force, it is military in nature and is responsible for civil policing under the au ...
, accusations of insider trading and tax fraud
Tax evasion is an illegal attempt to defeat the imposition of taxes by individuals, corporations, trusts, and others. Tax evasion often entails the deliberate misrepresentation of the taxpayer's affairs to the tax authorities to reduce the taxp ...
by the governor of the Central Bank of Spain and aspects of the Bárcenas affair
The Bárcenas affair is a corruption scandal in Spain that affects the conservative People's Party (PP), one of the country's main political parties. Following revelations that Luis Bárcenas, who served as party treasurer and senator, held 48 m ...
. Investigative reporting by the staff of ''El Mundo'' also revealed connections between the terrorist Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación
GAL (an acronym for ''Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación'', "Antiterrorist Liberation Groups") were death squads illegally established by officials of the Spanish government to fight against ETA, the principal Basque separatist militant gro ...
(GAL) and the Socialist
Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the ...
administration of Felipe González
Felipe González Márquez (; born 5 March 1942) is a Spanish lawyer, professor, and politician, who was the Secretary-General of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) from 1974 to 1997, and the 3rd Prime Minister of Spain since the ...
, revelations that contributed to his defeat in the 1996 elections.
In October 2005, ''El Mundo'' revealed that Nazi Aribert Heim
Aribert Ferdinand Heim (28 June 191410 August 1992), also known as Dr. Death and Butcher of Mauthausen, was an Austrian ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) doctor. During World War II, he served at the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp in Mauthausen, killin ...
(aka "Doctor Death") had been living in Spain for 20 years, probably with help from the ODESSA
Odesa (also spelled Odessa) is the third most populous city and municipality in Ukraine and a major seaport and transport hub located in the south-west of the country, on the northwestern shore of the Black Sea. The city is also the administrativ ...
network, in collaboration with Otto Skorzeny
Otto Johann Anton Skorzeny (12 June 1908 – 5 July 1975) was an Austrian-born German SS-''Obersturmbannführer'' (lieutenant colonel) in the Waffen-SS during World War II. During the war, he was involved in a number of operations, including th ...
, who had helped set up one of the most important ODESSA bases of operation in Spain, during the rule of Francisco Franco.
After the 11 March 2004 Madrid train bombings, the newspapers ''El Mundo'' and '' La Razón'', the regional television channel Telemadrid
Telemadrid is a public regional television station in the Community of Madrid, Spain, the flagship channel of the regional public broadcaster Radio Televisión Madrid (RTVM). It began its broadcast on 2 May 1989.
History First years
Telema ...
and the COPE
The cope (known in Latin as ''pluviale'' 'rain coat' or ''cappa'' 'cape') is a liturgical vestment, more precisely a long mantle or cloak, open in front and fastened at the breast with a band or clasp. It may be of any liturgical colour.
A c ...
radio network alleged that there had been inconsistencies in the explanations given by the Spanish judiciary about the bombings. Other Spanish media, such as '' El País'', ''ABC
ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script known as the alphabet.
ABC or abc may also refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Broadcasting
* American Broadcasting Company, a commercial U.S. TV broadcaster
** Disney–ABC Television ...
'' and the Cadena SER
La Cadena SER (the SER Network) is Spain's premier radio network in terms of both seniority (it was created in 1924) and audience share (it had a regular listenership in 2018 of 4,139,000). The acronym SER stands for ''Sociedad Española de Radi ...
radio network, accused ''El Mundo'' and the other media of manipulation over this issue. The bombings and the results of the subsequent judicial inquiry are still debated in Spain today.
Circulation
The circulation of ''El Mundo'' rose in the 1990s. It was
* 209,992 copies in 1993
* 268,748 copies in 1994
*68,813 copies in 2020
In 2001 ''El Mundo'' had a circulation of 291,000 copies and it was 312,366 copies next year. The paper had a circulation of 300,000 copies in 2003, making it the third best selling newspaper in the country.
Based on the findings of the European Business Readership Survey ''El Mundo'' had 11,591 readers per issue in 2006. Its circulation between June 2006 and July 2007 was 337,172 copies. The 2007 circulation of the paper was 337,000 copies.[ It was 338,286 copies in 2008 and had 200,000 readers for the printed edition in 2009.] The circulation of the paper was 266,294 copies in 2011. In April 2020 the newspaper had 51,526 readers of the printed edition.
Digital readership
''El Mundo'' (elmundo.es) is currently the second digital newspaper
A digital newspaper is a digital version of a printed newspaper. Newspapers can be digitally published online or as a digital copy on a digital device, such as a mobile phone or an E Ink reader.
Online
Web
Many organisations that publish a pr ...
in Spanish. It was previously in the lead after ''El País'' introduced a payment system for access to the contents of its electronic version. It had 24 million unique web visitors per month in 2009.
Many online readers are in Latin America, and the website has an edition for the Americas.[ However, digital expansion has done little to offset the decline in revenues from Spanish advertisers since 2008.]
The newspaper aims to increase digital profits via a subscription model. It launched a current affairs outlet only accessible to subscription customers, named ORBYT.
See also
*Controversies about the 2004 Madrid train bombings
The controversy regarding the handling and representation of the Madrid train bombings by the government arose with Spain's two main political parties, Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) and Partido Popular (PP), accusing each other of con ...
* Spanish newspapers
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mundo
Daily newspapers published in Spain
Newspapers published in Madrid
Spanish-language newspapers
Spanish-language websites
Newspapers established in 1989
1989 establishments in Spain
RCS MediaGroup newspapers
Spanish news websites
El Mundo (Spain)