Exhibition "The Media and the Transition" at the Communication Library and General Newspaper Archives

The Communication Library and General Newspaper Archive opens the 2026–2027 academic year with a bibliographic exhibition commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the beginning of Spain’s Transition and the role played by the media in this process.

The Transition brought about a paradigm shift in the Catalan and Spanish media. After decades of authoritarian rule, the press, radio, television and cinema underwent a very rapid process of transformation and adaptation to a new reality: a democratic one, in which politics moved to the centre of the agenda and the media became agents of change.

The 1966 Press Law was still in force, but the defence of democracy and freedom of expression was making its way into newsrooms and broadcasting stations, where a new generation of professionals trained at journalism faculties was joining the profession. There was also resistance, however: journalists faced attacks, assaults, police and judicial repression, sanctions, disciplinary proceedings and the withdrawal of issues from circulation. The profession responded with protest campaigns, strikes and demonstrations in defence of freedom of expression.

Between Franco’s death in November 1975 and the PSOE’s victory in the general election in October 1982, countless new media outlets emerged — Avui, El País, Diario 16, El Periódico de Catalunya, Interviú, El Jueves, Ràdio 4, and many others. Cinema sought new ways of reflecting the country’s transformation, while social and cultural movements, now emerging from clandestinity, created their own publications outside the official narratives.

The exhibition, which can be visited on the library’s ground floor, features a selection of books, magazines, newspapers, films, documentaries, posters and fanzines, complemented by reproductions of the first issues of some of the period’s most significant newspapers and magazines.

You can request the list of exhibited documents via the Pregunt@ service. 

Poster design: Sergi Calvet

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The Library would like to thank Mr Pepe Encinas for his generosity in providing two of his photographs for the exhibition poster.

Pepe Encinas has had a long career as a photographer and photography lecturer. During his time at the newspapers Tele/eXpres and El Periódico de Catalunya, he photographed key moments of Spain’s Transition.