DISSEMINATION OF NEWS IN THE SPANISH BAROQUE

Abstract

This article analyses the dissemination of news in the Spanish language throughout Europe during the seventeenth century, with attention given to the principal strategies put into effect by printers, publishers, entrepreneurs, and newsmongers for printed newssheets. Concretely, it analyses how the emergence of several weekly newspapers occurred in the Low Countries, both in those areas under the Spanish monarchy (with Brussels as the main focus for the emission of news) and those that were not (with Amsterdam and the Jewish community originating from the Iberian peninsula as the basic news agents), and their reception and redistribution within Spain. Here, in their turn, certain cities stood out that, for various reasons, received and distributed news from several parts of Europe; these were principally Seville, San Sebastián and Barcelona, where, besides, genuine news offices were established.

Keywords:

• Netherlands
• Spain
• distribution
• journalism
• news network
• Baroque

Notes

1. Jorge Sousa has worked on the origins of Portuguese journalism, from the Cartas Novas, Cartas de Novidades or Cartas de Novas Gerais to the Gazeta, of 1641, by way of the handwritten news collection Relação Universal do que Sucedeu em Portugal e Mais Províncias do Ocidente e Oriente (1626–1628), of Manoel Severim de Faria (Sousa A Gazeta da Restauração).

2. This paper attempts to follow the latest currents both in the study of the history of the mass media (Brügger ‘Theoretical Reflections on Media’), and in the study of early journalism (Dooley The Dissemination of News; Raymond The Invention of the Newspaper; Raymond News Networks in Seventeenth Century); and to highlight the characteristics of the production and flow of news from the periphery to the Peninsula in the case of the Spanish-language gazettes.

3. A certain business activity at the start of the seventeenth century has been verified that consisted in the translation and handwritten copying of Italian gazettes in Spain. A student of the University of Salamanca, Girolamo da Sommaia, lent out gazettes sent to him from his native Italy to people—at least five—who had them copied by hand for the price of one real (Bouza 51, 157). See Diario de un estudiante de Salamanca [Diary of a Salamanca student] (Salamanca: Universidad—Secretariado de Publicaciones e Intercambio Científico, 1977), by Girolamo da Sommaia himself. There are 70 references to the loaning out of the Gaceta—at times referred to as from Rome, on others as from Italy, and as Gazzetta, et relatione—and how it passed from hand to hand. At a certain time (491), Girolamo da Sommaia recounts how a certain ‘don Ambrosio’ lent him in his turn the Gaceta Spagnuola, without it being possible for us to determine whether this was printed or handwritten. On another occasion, (228), he mentions the nuoue di Valladolid e di Salamanca [news from Valladolid and Salamanca].

4. The other printers of this syndicate were Antonio Lacavalleria, Joseph Forcada, Vicente Surià, Juan Yolis, and Joseph Llopis.

5. ‘The new post of Gazetteer has today been the object of laughter, aimed at whoever throws his money away on such a trifle […] It would be a great position, since it prohibits printing, were it to prohibit anyone in handwritten letters from notifying their friends of the novelties of the court and outside it! Without this circumstance this so-called post would be left without value’. Once again, the coexistence of handwritten and printed news becomes apparent.

6. The normal practice was to give another less suspicious city in the printer's imprint, for example Brussels, the capital of Spanish Flanders, or Antwerp, although of course all the books came off de Castro's press in the Dutch capital.

7. A transcription and translation into English (edited by Paul Arblaster) of the majority of the issues from 1622 can be found on WikiNews: http://historyofnews.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Printed_by_Abraham_Verhoeven. See also Arblaster 22, 24, 25.

8. ‘Due to the tardiness of the post, as the roads are unusable, it is not possible to let the curious participate in the novelties that are offered about Spain, if there were news of particular interest we would omit it in the following news’ it says on 16 January 1691.

9. A complete catalog and the full text of all the expurgated news from Spain which appeared in the Spanish re-editions of Noticias Principales y Verdaderas, although not in the original newspaper from Brussels, can be found as a special section in Díaz Noci and Del Hoyo El nacimiento del periodismo vasco.

10. Who was possibly not the mother of Pedro, as the latter's second surname was Manterola.

11. They reached the extreme of publishing two editions of the reimpression of the Noticias Principales y Verdaderas, the issue of 25 October 1688.

12. For example, the news item of 28 June 1688, dated in San Sebastián, on the birth of the Prince of Wales, ‘by an extraordinary letter with the news sent to Madrid’.

13. Proof of this is that the state's propaganda apparatus was only really set in motion on particular occasions, such as the case of Hondarribia in 1638, but was not used for publishing official newspapers, as happened, for example, in France or England (see Díaz Noci ‘Fuentes históricas coetáneas’).