Between Two Different Traditions: The First Schools of Journalism in Spain (1926-1971)

Abstract

The origins of journalism education in Spain derive in particular from private initiatives like the School of El Debate between 1926 and 1936, and the University of Navarra’s Journalism Institute founded in 1958, the first to offer university-based journalism studies. Their founders, Ángel Herrera and Antonio Fontán, attentively examined the successful model established in the United States, where the first journalism schools were created at the beginning of the twentieth century. Practical subjects included in their curricula were based on American-style journalism training and handbooks. Nevertheless, they also took into serious consideration the long tradition of university German institutes devoted to the scientific study of the Press as a social phenomenon. In 1941, after the end of the Spanish civil war, an Official School of Journalism began operating but was regarded as not having an academic orientation due to its concern for controlling the access to the profession. The curriculum officially approved in the early nineties seventies for the three new born journalism schools in Madrid, Barcelona and Navarra was inspired, at least from a theoretical point of view, on the best existing American schools.