Press censorship in Spain's contemporary history

Abstract

Our goal is to analyze the importance of the press censorship in the evolution of the Spanish informative system in XIX and XX centuries. Depending on the sign of the political regimes, censorship played an important role in time periods of the Spanish history that were much longer than the parentheses of full freedom. Censorship prevented the free expression of the ideas and sought to secure a press that was partial to government, to win the favor of public opinion. Finally, the Constitution approved in 1978 opened a stage of acknowledgement of freedom of speech and information that ended the last manifestations of censorship.