SPANISH TELEVISION AND POLITICS IN THE FIRST SOCIALIST GOVERNMENT (1982-1986)

This book is a rigorous analysis of the role of RTVE in the early years of Felipe González's term. Through a historical and communicative approach, this work examines how Spanish public television became a strategic instrument in the consolidation of socialist power and the modernization of the country.

Based on exhaustive research of archives, journalistic sources, and official documents, the book unravels the dynamics of political control over TVE and its effects on the programming, financial management, and labor structure of the public broadcaster. From the appointment of José María Calviño as general director until his departure in 1986, the book exposes the tensions between the ideal of public service and the instrumentalization of the medium by the government.

With a critical approach, Pablo Berdón provides a novel perspective on a little-explored period in the history of Spanish television, highlighting the influence of political power in the construction of media discourse. The research not only reconstructs the parliamentary and union debates surrounding TVE, but also analyzes the formats and programs that defined a crucial era of television communication in Spain.

An essential book for researchers, media historians, and scholars of political communication, it provides an understanding of how public television has been, and continues to be, a space of dispute in which the construction of social and political reality is at stake.