The Press

In part three of our guide to Spanish football we look at who the Spanish press are and the influence they have. We also give you some tips on what to read and how to watch football on TV.

Marca and the football newspapers

In Spain, as in many European countries, football makes up a large part of the news. In some countries, such as the UK, football news and gossip can be found in the back pages of the daily newspapers. In fact you might argue that when it comes to British tabloids, most people buy them for the sport rather than to be informed on world events. In Spain the daily newspapers also cover sport but in much less detail their British equivalents. On a normal weekday, the sports section of El País or El Mundo is no more than 5 pages of which only 3 deal with football. However the reason for this is not that Spanish people are not interested in reading about football, in fact it’s the opposite. Spanish people are so interested in reading about sport that there are daily newspapers devoted exclusively to it. These sports newspapers don’t have an equivalent in the UK but they are published on a daily basis and contain up to 50 pages of sports news and gossip. As Phil Ball mentions in morbo, “you really can read, without irony, what the Real Madrid players had for breakfast”.

Sports newspapers are hugely popular in Spain, so much so that the most famous of them all, Marca, is the highest selling daily publication in Spain. Priced at just 1 euro, Marca can be found in shops and bars all over Spain while their website is one of the most visited in Spain with well over a million hits per day. Of course Marca isn’t the only sports newspaper in Spain with AS, Sport and El Mundo Deportivo making up the top four. The latter of those, El Mundo Deportivo, is the second oldest sports daily in Europe. It was first published in 1907 and is second only to Italian paper La Gazetta dello Sport.

So what exactly makes these newspapers so popular? Is it their cutting-edge, unbiased, in-depth journalism? Not exactly, in fact it’s the opposite. What makes Marca popular is the same as what makes The Sun popular; it’s cheap, easy to read and sensationalist. Marca, and the other sport dailys, tell people what they want to read. Their headlines are attention grabbing stories of big money signings or dark conspiracies. The newspapers are openly and clearly aligned to one team and in Spain that means you’re either Barcelona or Real Madrid. Madrid based publications Marca and AS are Real Madrid while Barcelona based Sport and El Mundo Deportivo are FC Barcelona.

How influential are the press?

So we know who the Spanish press are but how influential are they? It really depends on how things are going but their influence shouldn’t be underestimated. Both Real Madrid and Barcelona are asociaciones deportivas no mercantiles which basically means they don’t have an owner but are owned by their socios (members). FC Barcelona currently has around 150,000 socios while Real Madrid has more than 85,000. Rather than have chairman, both Real Madrid and FC Barcelona have presidents who are elected for 4 or 5 year terms. This is the most important privilege that being a socio of the club brings, the right to vote in presidential elections. So where does the media come into this? It’s quite simple, in the same way politicians seek newspaper and media support when running for office, candidates for the presidency of Real Madrid and FC Barcelona seek the support of the sports newspapers. Like politicians, they make promises about how they will improve the team, which players or managers they will target and all of this is lapped up and reported by the sports newspapers who have the power to influence the socios. If the newspapers don’t like a manager they can bring such pressure to bear that the president is forced to find a replacement.

The influence of the sports newspapers isn’t only related to presidential elections. Throughout the year, sports newspapers usually run campaigns against certain players, teams, referees or even the Spanish Football Federation as a result of what they deem to be controversial decisions that go against their team. The most recent example of this came during the 2009/2010 season when Real Madrid supporting newspapers Marca and AS started the so called Villarato campaign. The name comes from the surname of Spanish Football Federation President, Ángel María Villar. Following a series of controversial decisions going in FC Barcelona’s favour, both Marca and AS claimed there was a conspiracy going on in which Ángel María Villar influenced the selection of referees for FC Barcelona matches. The term Villarato caught on and soon almost everyone was discussing it on TV, radio and internet forums. After several months of Villarato, including the alleged doctoring of photographs by AS to show an FC Barcelona player as offside, several Barcelona players started to complain that their team was suffering as a result of referees trying to show they weren’t biased. Of course, in the end Barcelona won the league so we can’t say it influenced things too much but due its huge readership, their daily campaigns coverage and need for presidents to be elected they have to be taken into account.

Television Coverage in Spain

Like most leagues around the world, almost all La Liga matches are shown live on television in Spain. The vast majority of the matches are shown on private, pay-per view channels but there is one match per week shown on public TV. This match, known as the match en abierto is on a Saturday at 22.00 and is currently shown on the TV channel La Sexta and/or the regional channel (e.g. Telemadrid, TV3 etc). The rest of the games are shown on private TV channels Canal+ and GolTV. When it comes to Champions League matches, the matches are split between public and private TV. The Tuesday night match is shown on public station TVE  while the Wednesday one is on Canal+.

Tips

If you are interested in using the Spanish media to help keep yourself updated on what’s going in Spanish football then it’s important to bear in mind that almost everything you read or see in the vast majority of the mainstream will be biased and sensationalist. The football newspapers may support different teams but they share the same philosophy of bending the facts to suit their stories and even inventing stories from scratch. That isn’t to say you shouldn’t read them, they are useful for information on fixture dates and times, just that everything you read should be taken with a pinch of salt. The same can also be said for television coverage which tends to be rather amateurish and obsessed with Real Madrid and Barcelona. That being said, if you want something more informative then you can always watch El Informe Robinson (the Robinson Report) on Canal+. This is a progamme produced and sometimes presented by Michael Robinson. An English born former Republic of Ireland internationalist, Robinson spent the last four years of his playing career in Spain with Osasuna. After retiring in 1989, he stayed on in Spain working as a commentator. Over time Robinson has become a bit of a cult figure in Spain due to his heavily accented Spanish and his different way of analysing football. In fact Robinson reached real cult status when he was chosen to do the voice of one of the ugly sisters in the Spanish version of Shrek. The Robinson Report is his award winning show which claims its aim as to show the more human side of football. What it is, is a thirty minute documentary or sometimes interview focusing on a personality on Spanish football. The show has focused on rise of Lionel Messi or the life of controversial former-Real Madrid player Guti. If you have an opportunity to see it then it is worth watching and makes a pleasant change from the typical Spanish TV report into football.