The final setting of the golden age of the press in the world: The Canary Islands during the Spanish Republic

Resumo

This article addresses the evolution of the press during the period between the world wars (1914-1945) in an exceptional European micro-space, the diminutive and distant Spanish archipelago of the Canary Islands. The account given here reveals that, although Canary Islands newspapers followed in the wake of others published in the leading enclaves of the Western world, they were late in doing so and did so in an unusual manner and in negligible numbers, due to socioeconomic backwardness, isolation, and a minimal readership and market for advertising. The aim of this paper is to integrate the communicative reality studied into the world history of journalism, as advocated by the latest tendencies in history-writing, in order to further knowledge of events that occurred in more developed areas and their subsequent influence on outlying, marginal regions, whose response was more modest and belated, owing to greater contextual limitations.