Jaume Roures Llop (born 8 September 1950) is a Spanish businessman, film producer and

media mogul A media proprietor, also called a media executive, media mogul, media tycoon, or press baron is an entrepreneur who controls any means of public or commercial mass media, through the personal ownership or holding of a dominant position within a ...

from

Catalonia Catalonia is an autonomous community of Spain, designated as a ''nationalities and regions of Spain, nationality'' by its Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia of 2006, Statute of Autonomy. Most of its territory (except the Val d'Aran) is situate ...

. Roures is best known as the founder of the newspaper '' Público'' and as the CEO of the media group

Mediapro Mediaproducción, S.L.U., better known as Mediapro, is a multimedia communications group in Spain founded in April 1994 in Barcelona. The company is well involved in movie and television production. The company holds branch offices in Madrid, S ...

. Considered a

left-wing nationalist 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 either as a whole or of certain social hierarchies. Left-wing poli ...

, he was a member of Trotskyist and Anti-Francoist organizations in his youth.

Early life

Born in

Barcelona Barcelona ( ; ; ) is a city on the northeastern coast of Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second-most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within c ...

in 1950, Roures was a member of clandestine anti-francoist organizations such as Comisiones Obreras (CC.OO.), the Workers' Front of Catalonia (FOC) and the

Trotskyist Trotskyism (, ) is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Russian revolutionary and intellectual Leon Trotsky along with some other members of the Left Opposition and the Fourth International. Trotsky described himself as an ...

Revolutionary Communist League (LCR). Arrested during the

Francoist dictatorship Francoist Spain (), also known as the Francoist dictatorship (), or Nationalist Spain () was the period of Spanish history between 1936 and 1975, when Francisco Franco ruled Spain after the Spanish Civil War with the title . After his death i ...

, he spent time imprisoned in the Barcelona's Cárcel Modelo from 1969 to 1971 as a political prisoner. Roures began a career as sports journalist in TV3—the Catalan public television channel created in 1983—serving for eight years at the helm of the Department of Sports' News and Productions.

Mass media businessman

Roures founded the production company

, primarily employed at its beginnings by the Canal+'s sports productions and the newscast services of

Canal Sur Canal Sur ('South Channel') is part of Radio y Televisión de Andalucía (RTVA), the public broadcasting company of Andalusia. It was created by means of the devolved powers given to this autononomous community by an Act of Parliament in its ...

. In 2005, Gestora de Inversiones Audiovisuales La Sexta obtained the last of the DTT licenses granted during the government of

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (; born 4 August 1960) is a Spanish politician and member of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE). He was the Prime Minister of Spain being elected for two terms, in the 2004 and 2008 general elections. O ...

. Mediapro had a stake in Grupo GAMP (the primary shareholder of the company, the other one being, at the time,

Televisa Grupo Televisa, S.A.B., simply known as Televisa, is a Mexican telecommunications and broadcasting company. A major Latin American mass media corporation, it often presents itself as the largest producer of Spanish-language content. In April ...

). The related TV channel,

LaSexta La Sexta (; ; stylised as laSexta) is a privately owned Spanish free-to-air television channel that was founded on 18 March 2001 as Beca TV and began broadcasting on 1 April 2001. By 21 July 2003, the channel ran into debt and was shut down, bu ...

, begin to broadcast in March 2006. By means of the publisher 'Mediapubli, Sociedad de Publicaciones y Ediciones S.L.' (created in February 2007), Roures and other partners such as Tatxo Benet and Gerard Romy launched the daily newspaper '' Público'', which published its first issue on 26 September 2007. Vowing to draw disenchanted left-wing readers away from ''

El País (; ) is a Spanish-language daily newspaper in Spain. is based in the capital city of Madrid and it is owned by the Spanish media conglomerate PRISA. It is the second-most circulated daily newspaper in Spain . is the most read newspaper in ...

'', the print version of ''Público'' was successively edited by Ignacio Escolar, and . Despite having achieved a substantial readership growth from 2008 to 2012, at the height of 2011 it had become apparent that the business model (with a heavy indebtedness) was not viable, and the company filed a layoff affecting a 20% of the workforce in 2011. Having filed for receivership on 3 January 2012, Roures and his partners resolved to close the print edition of ''Público'' on 24 February 2012. A group of 20 former Mediapubli employees continued publishing the online version without support from the publisher. However, on 23 May 2012, the receiver granted the print and online Mediapubli properties to Display Connectors S.L, a company created in February 2012 and participated by Roures and other Mediapubli people. As of 2019, he held a 12% stake in Mediapro, primarily owned by Chinese company Orient Hontai Capital. In 2020, Roures promoted the launch of the think-tank 'Institut Sobiranies'. In October 2023, the board of Mediapro determined the exit of Roures as managing partner of the company, reportedly at request of majority shareholder Southwind Group and minority shareholder WPP.

Views

Roures is considered a

. He claims to preserve the ideological views from his youth. Roures has stated that he is in favour of the right to self-determination of the peoples. Despite claiming to have voted

CUP A cup is an open-top vessel (container) used to hold liquids for drinking, typically with a flattened hemispherical shape, and often with a capacity of about . Cups may be made of pottery (including porcelain), glass, metal, wood, stone, pol ...

in 2012, he has declared not to be pro-Catalan independence.

Filmography

;Producer

References

External links

Jaume Roures
at

Internet Movie Database IMDb, historically known as the Internet Movie Database, is an online database of information related to films, television series, podcasts, home videos, video games, and streaming content online – including cast, production crew and biograp ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Roures, Jaume 1950 births Living people Catalan nationalists Spanish Trotskyists Spanish mass media owners Spanish film producers Mass media people from Barcelona