Press, Politics and National Identities in Catal – The Transformation of La Vanguardia, 1881–1931

For more than three generations, the members of the God family controlled Barcelona's top-selling newspaper La Vanguardia, navigating it through the country's turbulent 20th century. Whether under the corrupt politics of the Bourbon Restoration, the radical transformations of the Second Republic or the tragedy of the Spanish Civil War, La Vanguardia remained Barcelona's indisputable journalistic benchmark. The long-standing reputation of the God dynasty, however, is in sharp contrast with the lack of studies about their members and the newspaper they founded. This silence is due, in part, to the influence that La Vanguardia still exerts on public life today. Drawing on hitherto unused archival material, this book is the first account about 'the most renowned publishers and the most important newspaper in Catalonia's history.' In so doing, it also sheds new light on how the media shaped (and conditioned) Europe's birth of mass politics. Pol Dalmau focuses on the case of a renowned family in Barcelona to uncover the media's critical role in Europe's uneven road to modernity.