An In-Depth Look at Media Subsidies in Spain’s Autonomous Communities in 2019

This article focuses on public subsi-dies for the communication media in Spain for the year 2019, presenting an in-depth analysis of the situation. State subsidies for media is a phe-nomenon that became widespread in Europe during the 1960s and 1970s. In Spain, they were regulated in the 1980s, but shortly thereafter the state almost completely halted its support, and it was Spain’s autonomous re-gions who then promoted the subsi-dies. In the midst of the professional debate about whether it is possible to reinstate this support from the Span-ish government because of the coro-navirus crisis, we identify nine auton-omous regions which promote these types of subsidies. Through a study that is both prospective and proposi-tional, our analysis will thoroughly ex-amine the institutions granting subsi-dies, the sectors benefiting from them, their aim and justification, and the margin of discretionary compliance with which they are granted.