Prensa española y monarquía : el «silencio crítico» se termina. Estudio de caso

Since the dictator died and the monarchy proposed by him was enthroned, the critical silence of the Spanish press has been standard practice. It certainly appears that this involvement with the monarchy has started to diminish with the existence of the newspaper Público. This newspaper inserts news and comments that are of no benefit to the Royal Family’s artificial image. Sometimes, the stance taken by Público on the monarchy forces other newspapers to deal with matters that tarnish the king´s image to a lesser extent, when not being critical with the critics. The case study refers to the stand taken by some publications in 2008 when Pilar Urbano, an active Opus Dei journalist, presented the book La reina muy de cerca, based on 15 interviews with Sophia of Greece. By means of a combination of analysis of content and critical analysis of the speech, we have studied the behaviour of the Spanish press in view of the controversy by analysing four Madrid newspapers. After analysing the newspapers El País, El Mundo, Abc and Público, we can conclude that only the latter held a clearly critical position towards the Monarchy, and disagreed with Queen Sophia’s opinions, while the rest proved to be favourable or understanding. The critical silence is beginning to break.