ABSTRACT
The first broadcaster in Spain began operations in autumn 1923 under the de Rivera dictatorship. Its position was retrospectively legitimated by a royal decree of the following year. The decree allowed the government to grant broadcasting concessions to multiple private entities, a considerable contrast with the legal position in most of the rest of Europe. During the short-lived Second Republic, proposals were made to establish a public service broadcaster (PSB), but the pressures of Civil War meant that these proposals were dead letters (Bustamante, 2007, pp. 19–20). The Francoist victory in the Civil War meant that only private operators with Fascist sympathies could continue to broadcast.
