Press and dictatorship in transnational perspective. Notes on the journalistic treatment of the last Argentine dictatorship in the Spanish weekly Cambio 16

Abstract

This paper aims to make a first approach to the journalistic treatment given to the last Argentine military dictatorship (1976-1983) by the Spanish political magazine Cambio 16, in the context of the transition to democracy in that country. In the convulsive political scenario resulting from the death of the dictator Franco and the dissolution of the regime he established in that country, and given the still prevailing restrictions on news activity, this weekly –of great editorial success in the Iberian transitional context– offered a vast coverage of what happened in other latitudes, by way of international information. In this sense, and by way of hypothesis, it is considered that the reference to current events in Argentina configured a modality of circumvention of local censorship that allowed addressing, indirectly and mediated, issues related to democracy and civil liberties, the political role of the Armed Forces and the political and repressive violence, and, therefore, offer its readers reflections on the immediate past and the present in Spain.