El Mundo

Overview

El Mundo — Spanish for “The World” — is a Spanish daily newspaper founded in Madrid in 1989 and owned by Unidad Editorial, part of Italy’s RCS MediaGroup. Its first issue appeared on 23 October 1989, launched by Pedro J. Ramírez and three co-founders, and within about four years it had risen to the top ranks of Spain’s daily press on investigative journalism and bold design (IESE Publishing; El Mundo). Today it remains one of Spain’s leading national newspapers, sustained increasingly by digital subscriptions as its print circulation falls (AFP; Asociación de la Prensa de Málaga).

The paper’s identity was set at its founding: an orthodox business model, aggressive headlines, a critical approach to the establishment, a young staff and an innovative character built on investigative journalism and graphic design (IESE Publishing). That formula carried it, in just over four years, into one of the top positions in circulation and influence among the roughly 90 titles that then made up the Spanish daily press (IESE Publishing).

El Mundo is not the only Spanish-language publication with this name — other newspapers called El Mundo have existed in Puerto Rico, Argentina, Colombia and El Salvador — but this profile is the Madrid daily founded in 1989 (IESE Publishing; RCS MediaGroup).

Founding and rapid rise

El Mundo was born out of a dismissal. Pedro J. Ramírez had been dismissed from Diario 16 after pressure from the authorities, and 96 journalists left with him to found the new paper (ClassiFYIed). The first issue was released on 23 October 1989 (IESE Publishing). The paper’s own masthead states it was founded in 1989 by Alfonso de Salas, Pedro J. Ramírez, Balbino Fraga and Juan González (El Mundo).

The launch was, by the standards of the Spanish press, an unusually fast success. A 1994 IESE business-school case study records that in just over four years the newspaper had moved into one of the top positions in circulation and influence among the 90 titles of the Spanish daily press (IESE Publishing). The study credits an orthodox business model, aggressive headlines, a critical approach to the establishment, a varied editorial line, a young staff and an innovative character based on investigative journalism and graphic design (IESE Publishing). Its problem at that point was the opposite of obscurity: how to keep growing in the autonomous regions, where its market share was still low (IESE Publishing). Regional editions followed, including an Andalusia edition that in 2017 reported on a pioneering centre for deafblind adults in Salteras, Seville, run by the association APASCIDE.

Ownership: Unidad Editorial and RCS MediaGroup

El Mundo was originally published by Unedisa. In 2007 Unedisa, controlled by the Italian publishing group RCS MediaGroup, completed the acquisition of the whole share capital of Grupo Recoletos for €817.4 million, a deal valuing Recoletos at €1.1 billion (RCS MediaGroup). The merger of Unedisa and Recoletos created Unidad Editorial, the current owner of the paper, and brought together El Mundo with the sports daily Marca and the financial daily Expansión, both leaders in their segments, plus magazines including Telva and Actualidad Económica (RCS MediaGroup).

The combined group was considerable: Unedisa and Recoletos together recorded pro-forma 2006 turnover of about €646 million and EBITDA of about €141 million, and RCS said the acquisition created a leading publishing group in Spain in the national daily newspaper sector, in both circulation and readership (RCS MediaGroup). RCS described Unedisa at the time as the publishing company of El Mundo, “second daily newspaper in Spain” (RCS MediaGroup).

Italian ownership has been a recurring question for the paper, and its current director answers it directly: there is “absolutely no interference in the editorial line” from the parent company (ClassiFYIed). Urbano Cairo, president of RCS MediaGroup, “does not sell” publishing products, in the director’s words, and has turned down offers for the paper (ClassiFYIed).

Editors, scoops and the 2014 dismissal

Ramírez ran El Mundo from its founding until January 2014, when he was fired from his post (WAN-IFRA; AFP). He argued that reporting on corruption scandals involving Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy led to his sacking, and the industry body WAN-IFRA reported that he accused the government of wanting retribution for articles he had published about alleged corruption (WAN-IFRA). The dismissal came amid falling advertising revenues across the Spanish press (WAN-IFRA).

The reporting at the centre of the dispute was specific and consequential. One of Ramírez’s top recent scoops had been to publish a text message of support sent by Rajoy to the chief suspect in a corruption scandal engulfing his Popular Party, a disclosure that raised calls for the premier to resign in 2013 (AFP). AFP reported that Ramírez was fired after “breaking a series of political corruption stories” and that his dismissal “was seen by his defenders as politically driven” (AFP).

The succession was unsettled for years. David Jiménez, a former Asia bureau chief who had covered the Fukushima nuclear disaster and the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami as well as conflicts in Afghanistan, Kashmir and East Timor, Burma, Indonesia and Nepal, was named editor-in-chief in May 2015 (Nieman Foundation). Jiménez, author of three books including the award-winning Children of the Monsoon, had studied the role of foreign correspondents in the digital era as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University (Nieman Foundation). Francisco Rosell then directed the paper from 2017 to 2022, stabilising the editorial line and taking the step to a premium subscription model, before Joaquín Manso — the sixth director — took over in about mid-2022 (ClassiFYIed).

Ramírez himself did not leave journalism. Less than two years after his dismissal he launched the web-only El Español, having gathered €18 million, including a €5 million severance payment from El Mundo and €3.6 million raised through crowdfunding, vowing it would be “an indomitable newspaper that does not flinch in denouncing abuse of power” (AFP).

Print decline and the digital subscription turn

The Spanish print market in which El Mundo rose in the 1990s has shrunk drastically. A KPMG report for the Asociación de Medios de Información, reported by the Málaga press association in April 2024, found that all Spanish newspapers together distributed 876,637 copies a day, and that general-information newspapers distributed 736,878 copies a day in February 2024, down 6.42% on the same month a year earlier (Asociación de la Prensa de Málaga). Single-copy sales fell 8.27% year on year, to 629,244 a day (Asociación de la Prensa de Málaga).

Newspaper	Daily copies, February 2024
El País	52,024
La Vanguardia	49,267
La Voz de Galicia	42,886
El Correo	35,002
El Mundo	34,485
ABC	34,199

Source: KPMG report for the Asociación de Medios de Información, via Asociación de la Prensa de Málaga. Note that the source article lists ABC before El Mundo, but its own figures put El Mundo ahead of ABC; the table above follows the figures.

The table carries a quiet verdict on the paper’s history: the “second daily newspaper in Spain” of the 2007 RCS release and the “second biggest-selling newspaper” of AFP’s 2015 account is, by February 2024 daily sales, fifth among general-interest dailies (RCS MediaGroup; AFP; Asociación de la Prensa de Málaga). That is a circulation story, not an influence story — and the paper’s answer has been subscriptions. It launched a premium digital model in October 2019, passed 110,000 subscribers by early 2023 after once doubting that 150,000 was attainable, and recorded 8,000 new web subscribers in January 2023 alone, with a medium-term target of 250,000 (ClassiFYIed).

The editorial line Manso describes is that of “the newspaper of the open society”, committed to plurality, tolerance, moderation and institutional commitment, defending the separation of powers and transparency, with “a vocation for centrality, which… sometimes veers a little to the right” and plural voices on the left (ClassiFYIed).

Frequently asked questions

When was El Mundo founded? Its first issue was released on 23 October 1989, founded by Pedro J. Ramírez with Alfonso de Salas, Balbino Fraga and Juan González after Ramírez’s dismissal from Diario 16 (IESE Publishing; El Mundo; ClassiFYIed).

Who owns El Mundo? Unidad Editorial S.A., formed in 2007 from the merger of Unedisa and Grupo Recoletos and controlled by the Italian publishing group RCS MediaGroup (RCS MediaGroup).

Why was founding editor Pedro J. Ramírez dismissed in 2014? He was fired in January 2014 after reporting on corruption scandals involving Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, including publishing Rajoy’s text message to a corruption suspect; he argued the reporting caused his sacking, and his defenders saw the dismissal as politically driven (WAN-IFRA; AFP).

How large is El Mundo’s print circulation now? It distributed 34,485 copies a day in February 2024, fifth among Spain’s general-interest dailies behind El País (52,024), La Vanguardia (49,267), La Voz de Galicia (42,886) and El Correo (35,002), according to a KPMG report for the Asociación de Medios de Información (Asociación de la Prensa de Málaga).

Who runs El Mundo today? As of July 2024 the director was Joaquín Manso, the sixth director, appointed in about mid-2022 after Francisco Rosell (2017–2022); the paper had more than 110,000 digital subscribers in early 2023 (ClassiFYIed; El Mundo).

What this profile does not claim

• It does not assert that El Mundo is still the second-largest Spanish daily; the 2024 figures place it fifth by daily print sales, and the “second” descriptions are dated to their 2007 and 2015 sources.
• It does not assert an original masthead name: reference works disagree between “El Mundo del Siglo Veinte” and “El Mundo del Siglo Veintiuno”, and neither was independently verified.
• It does not name Jorge de Esteban as editor: the March 2023 interview names Joaquín Manso as director, and the paper’s own July 2024 masthead still lists Manso; the reference-work infobox appears to confuse the editorship with the Unidad Editorial chief executive role.
• It does not repeat the 2004 Madrid bombings coverage dispute, the GAL revelations, the 2005 Aribert Heim scoop, or the claim of being the second digital newspaper in Spanish; all rest on reference-work material not verified in a fully-read source.
• It does not assert the García-Abadillo editorship dates or Jiménez’s later sacking, which were not verified in a fully-read source.
• It makes no claim about the paper’s current digital audience size or its regional editions beyond the evidenced Andalusia edition; neither was verified in a fully-read source in this pass.
• It does not treat the director’s own statements about editorial independence as independent findings; they are attributed to him in interview.