314 | nº 37, pp. 313-329 |July-December of 2023Las Noticias (1896-1939): a successful business venture cut short by the Spanish Civil WarISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978doxa.comunicación1. IntroductionAlthough there are several works and investigations on the history and trajectory of the most inuential newspaper and magazine publications in dierent historical periods in Spain (El Diluv io, La Esfera, La Vanguardia, Blanco y Negro, Diari Català, La Voz de Galicia, etc.), it is surprising that the history of one of the most popular Catalan newspapers from the late 19th and earlier 20th centuries, Las Noticias has never been addressed.It wasfounded in 1896, disappeared after being collectivised by the U.G.T. during the civil war, and was later banned during the Franco dictatorship. Las Noticias not only stands out for its impact on Spanish and Catalan society of the time but also for its founder, Rafael Roldós Viñolas’ innovative commercial and promotional activities. ese activities aimed to ensure the viability of this type of newspaper, which is focused on increasing the sale of copies and attracting and retaining subscribers and advertisers.is research aims to study the trajectory of this newspaper and to highlight the dierent initiatives it carried out, such as the early edition of supplements and monographs on various topics or sports scoreboards that featured on its front page to report the latest sports results, which gave rise to a weekly meeting point for Barcelona society of the time. is research also reviews its large and prestigious sta of collaborators, which includes renowned writers, photographers, poets, philosophers and politicians from the rst decades of the 20th century.e literature review of the scarce academic literature on Las Noticias reveals several errors and inaccuracies that should be corrected to write a rigorous history of this media. For instance, the year of its foundation demonstrates these inaccuracies as some works state that it took place in 1897 (Pérez, 2001:48) or even 1887 (Guillamet, 2001:131), when in fact it took place in 1896.We gathered and analysed Las Noticias from the second issue published on 16 March 1896 until the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, when it was collectivised and became part of the Union General de Trabajadores trade’ (U.G.T.) instrument of dissemination. We have consulted the collection housed in Arxiu Històric de la Ciutat de Barcelona for primary sources, the only archive in Spain that conserves/preserves almost all the copies of the newspaper. In this sense, the copies up to 30 September 1911 are saved on microlm. It can be found in hard copy as of issue number 5633, corresponding to 1 October. It should be noted that the Digital in Spain. anks to his commercial initiatives, Las Noticias soon became one of Barcelona’s most widely circulated newspapers. His successful career was unexpectedly cut short in 1936 with the outbreak of the Civil War when the UGT seized the newspaper. After the conict, its publication was no longer authorised. Despite the relevance of Las Noticias in Barcelona’s society at the time, hardly any works accurately describe its trajectory. us, this research aims to highlight the importance of this newspaper in the history of Spanish and Catalan journalism through an exhaustive newspaper review. Keywords:Las Noticias; history of journalism; journalism in Spain; Francoist censorship; Rafael Roldós.publicitarios en España. Gracias a sus acciones comerciales, pronto se convertirá en una de las cabeceras de mayor circulación de Barcelona. Su exitosa trayectoria se verá inesperadamente truncada en 1936, con el estallido de la Guerra Civil, momento en el que el diario es incautado por la UGT. Finalizado el conicto, no se volverá a autorizar su publi cación. A pesar de la relevancia de Las Noticias en la sociedad barcelonesa de la época, apenas existen trabajos que describan su trayectoria con exactitud. Así, a través de una exhaustiva revisión hemerográca, esta investigación pretende poner de relieve la importancia de este ro tativo en la historia del periodismo español y catalán. Palabras clave: Las Noticias; historia del periodismo; periodismo en España; censura franquista; Rafael Roldós. doxa.comunicación | nº 37, pp. 313-329 | 315July-December of 2023Carolina Serra Folch and Cristina Martorell CastellanoISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978Library of Spain provides the digital version of the newspaper free of charge. Still, only the issues were published between 19 February 1898 and 31 December 1902. e dicult access to these copies most likely explains the lack of research on this newspaper and the inaccurate or confusing information published at times. However, the several chronicles that report the founding of Las Noticias1and the regular mentions in dierent newspapers about the trajectory of this newspaper and its founder to demonstrate its essential role in Barcelona society in the early 20th century. Without Roldós, most of the Spanish newspapers would not exist; and his fame in this respect has been such that not a single Spanish newspaper has been founded for thirty years or more, whose rst concern was not to write to Roldós to ask Roldós for advice, to ask Roldós for help… and Roldós, with the aection he felt for these cultural instruments, helped them all. He shared like manna la copious publicity that his agency enjoyed (Las Noticias, 1918:3). Rafael Roldós Viñolas is the rst documented advertising agent in Spain to this day. Roldós was born in Barcelona, on Platería Street, on 29 March 1846 (Administrative Municipal Archive of Barcelona, 1846). His interest in/passion for journalism arose at an early age when he began to work as a typesetter in the Ramírez printing house, “the rst and most reputable of the printing establishments in that capital city [Barcelona] and perhaps in all of Spain” (La Opinión, 1880:2). Rafael Roldós started in advertising as an advertising broker- mainly for the Diario de Barcelona- until 1872, when he founded the advertising centre Roldós y Compañía, where he also managed advertisements. He began to incorporate other services such as writing advertisements: “He went from ad broker to advertisements: he sensed them. He woke merchants up from their lethargy, wasted his time, and as a result of his work, an advertising centre emerged, one of the most important in Spain” (El Noticiero Universal, 1918:4).Roldós’ entrepreneurial spirit pushed him to develop various businesses of dierent kinds, including the creation of the company Sociedad de Artistas Españoles, dedicated to reproducing and selling oil paintings and other art objects in 1886 (Serra, 2015) or launching the brands “Vigor estomacal”(Boletín Ocial de la Propiedad Intelectual é Industrial, 1904:1311) and “La Flor de Oro”(Boletín Ocial de la Propiedad Intelectual é Industrial, 1909:1247), in 1904 and 1909 respectively. He has also presented some projects to the Barcelona City Council, such as the proposal to decorate the Rambla of Barcelona for La mercé festivities in 1887 (Roldós, 1877) or the installation project for public urinals in the city centre as an advertising medium, to modernise Barcelona’s image before the imminent 1888 Universal Exposition (Proyecto de retretes públicos, 1887). However, the foundation of Las Noticias in 1896 is “undoubtedly the greatest love of his life in the industrial area/era” (El Noticiero Universal, 1918:4). Especially during the gestation/incubation of the newspaper, Roldós seemed to put his heart and soul into it: He rarely went to bed in the business agency he had set up in the basement of the Quatre Nacions hotel. At home, he only stayed there when he was eating and sleeping, but not always. e intellectuals of the Penya del Café Orient, where he used to go/frequent, had lost sight of him. My Roldós was fully absorbed by a single idea: the triumph of “Las Noticias” (La Veu de Catalunya, 1936:7).e press underwent a notable change at the end of the 19th century: the Printing Law of 1883, the development of the railroad and the telegraph, and the population’s higher literacy levels allowed for the consolidation of the daily press and fostered the 1 For example, between April and June 1936, the journalist Joan Costa publishes in La Veu de Catalunya and in the section “Memòries d’un periodista”, dierent chronicles abour Las Noticias, which gather unedited information about its beginning and evolution. 316 | nº 37, pp. 313-329 |July-December of 2023Las Noticias (1896-1939): a successful business venture cut short by the Spanish Civil WarISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978doxa.comunicacióncreation of new newspapers and the improvement of existing ones –which had been unstable for years, were mainly controlled by the dierent political parties and had a limited circulation due to their high price and the working classes’ illiteracy–. Moreover, this boom in the press at the end of the century was favoured by the release of new illustrated publications such as La Ilustración Española y Americana, Blanco y Negro, Nuevo Mundo and Mundo Gráco “with a dierent presentation format and novel contents compared to the traditional daily press” (Valbuena, 2014: 60).2. Birth and early years of Las NoticiasOn Sunday, 15 March 1896, the rst issue of Las Noticias was published. It was published in Spanish and contained four pages and ve columns; it was laid out as follows. e front page featured the masthead Las Noticias and the heading “Evening newspaper, news, notices and telegrams” below. On the left, there is information about the cost of the newspaper –5 cents– and its subscription –1 peseta a month in Barcelona– and on the right, information on the rates for advertising spaces. It also includes the newspaper’s editorial oce and administration address, initially located at number 17 on the second oor of La Rambla del Centro.At its foundation, the editorial oce and administration of Las Noticias were located on Rambla del Centro 17, rst oor 3A, while the newspaper’s address was on Calle Guardia 14. Newspaper printing was rst done in the Diario Mercantil printing house on Gran Vía de las Cortes Catalanas, number 212 (Anuario Riera,1896:278). Two years later, the newspaper was printed in the printing house Tipografía Hispano Americana, located on Calle Marqués de Barberá 13 and 19. In 1899, Las Noticias already had its own printing house on Calle Guardia 14, where the newspaper’s editorial oce was later moved.In 1897, only one year later, the initial heading included that it was an illustrated newspaper that also featured advertisements and claried that “is newspaper is not aliated with any political party”. At that time, it was no longer an evening newspaper, and in 1903, it included “published in the morning”. e change to a morning edition was due to various reasons: after realising that there was less public on the street at night to the lack of validity of its news- the evening newspaper is a paper, the current of which does not last for longer than an hour (Costa, 1936:7)and possibly, the desire to distance itself from one of its main competitors, the evening newspaper El Noticiero Universal. As early as 1905 and 1906, the epigraph of Las Noticias also announced that the newspaper had “correspondents in Europe’s and America’s main capitals”.In its rst issue, the newspaper pages are occupied by the Events, Spectacles, foreign and national Telegrams sections: latest news, General News, Entertainment(which included games and hieroglyphics) and the Stockmarket close. As of issue 6, a few days later, a new section was included on the front page called “Crónica elegant”, which appeared sporadically. It featured a woman’s silhouette whose attire was described in detail. It became an imminently newsworthy newspaper at the beginning of the 20th century as its contents were divided into sections with brief headings –Ephemeris, Premises, Politics, Ocial, Judicial, Maritime, Military, Municipal, Regional, Religious, e stock exchange, Commercial Magazine, Stock Exchange Bulletin, Public Entertainment, Sports, etc.–, while commercial advertisements feature on both the rst and fourth page. Rafael Guerrero Carmona managed the newspaper in its initial period, and Rafael Roldós helped form Las Noticias’ initial sta, which included philosophers, writers, politicians, poets, journalists and reporters. It is one of the rst newspapers distributed to reporters throughout Spain and overseas-. Renowned and illustrious gures collaborated with the newspaper from its foundation to 1925. Las Noticias’ editorial ocebecame many journalists’ and writers’ rst job- some of whom had recently doxa.comunicación | nº 37, pp. 313-329 | 317July-December of 2023Carolina Serra Folch and Cristina Martorell CastellanoISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978arrived in Barcelona –this is the case of Augusto Uribe in 1897; Manuel Brunet, editor of the political section of the newspaper from 1917 (Guillamet, 2010:1-4); Josep Pla, in 1919 (Porcel, 2008:81), where he met and made friends with Brunet–, and the Valencian cartoonist Ernest Guasp upon his arrival to Barcelona, at only eighteen years of age (Casasús, 1996). Las Noticias is also the rst newspaper to hire José Pérez de Rozas as an editorial assistant upon his arrival from Madrid and to reproduce his brother’s photographs, Carlos Pérez de Rozas Masdeu in 1911 (Pérez de Rozas, 2016). e following writers also worked at Las Noticias’ editorial oce: Ferran Agulló, Emilio Tintorer –who worked as a critic in the newspaper from 1907, in the column “Paradojas” and under the pseudonym “Max” (Molas [hom.], 2003)–, Ramon Orts-Ramos, José de Cuéllar, Adolfo Marsillach, Màrius Verdaguer –nephew of Narcís Verdaguer and Francesca Bonnemaison–, Rafael Moragas, Mario Verdaguer, Julià Pérez Carrasco, Domingo Cirici Ventalló or Josena Solsona, who published several narrations in Spanish in the newspaper between 1922 and 1927 (Real, 2006:256). e following noteworthy collaborators included Miguel de Unamuno (Sotelo, 1993), Ramiro de Maeztu, Edmundo d’Amicis, José Martínez Ruiz, Azorín –who was editor of Las Noticias and other newspapers, sometimes under dierent pseudonyms– (Almarcha and Sánchez, 2005:14), Manuel Folch y Torres –who later founded the well-known magazine Cu-Cut!– (Castillo, 1997:60), José Echegaray, Juan José Morato, Rubén Darío, Leopoldo Alas, Pablo Iglesias, Josep Maria de Sagarra –whose friend Josep Pla helped him to make his debut in the newspaper (Permanyer, 1982)–, and Eugeni d’Ors, who wrote the section “Las obras y los días” in 1920 (Pascual, 1994:704). Some of its correspondents, such as Carlos Martí in Havana or Pérez Jorba in Paris, are also well-known. Likewise, Las Noticias is one of the rst newspapers to have a photojournalist, Sánchez Manzano.In 1909, the Salamancan Juan Barco y Cosme (1858-1927) –a close friend of the collaborator Miguel de Unamuno– took over from Rafael Guerrero as editor of the newspaper, centring it ideologically around liberalism. is departure left the newspaper”with as little spirit as a store of vetis and threads” or as its editor in chief, Josep Miró i Folgueras, described it, as a “news cementary” (Ametla, 1963: 217)A series of common factors converge in Las Noticias and the most important newspapers of this period; among them is the modernisation of the business conception of journalistic activity, the imitation of successful foreign models, the improved social consideration of the journalistic profession, or the impetus of “new political forces in the public debate and the increasingly weak system of the Restoration” (Barrera, 2007:247).2.1. e subscribers’ loyalty to Las Noticias is critical to its successRafael Roldós Viñolas was aware that he had to foster subscription and customer loyalty to Las Noticias to obtain a xed income that would allow him to keep the newspaper aoat. Furthermore, it enabled him to prove his readership to potential advertisers, another fundamental source of nancing for the newspaper. Even before the publication of the rst issue, Roldós ooded Barcelona with promotional posters, promising to give away several oleographs to his rst subscribers. Moreover, the name Las Noticias was posted on the building facade in striking gold letters, which caught the curiosity of passers-by: “Many people went on to subrscribe to the newspaper for two or three months as they were very much looking forward to taking that gift home” (Costa, 1936: 7) From the third issue onwards and during its rst few months in circulation, small advertisements about the newspaper’s characteristics and its subscription price featured in the newspaper. 318 | nº 37, pp. 313-329 |July-December of 2023Las Noticias (1896-1939): a successful business venture cut short by the Spanish Civil WarISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978doxa.comunicaciónRoldós also prioritised readers’ loyalty. is was the case even before the newspaper was founded. Sometime before the rst issue hit the streets, he put up a collection of artworks in his oce, which could be seen from the street, advertising that readers could obtain the works after subscribing to the newspaper. is strategy proved to be successful: “Roldós’ tactics were the key to the new journalistic enterprises’ success” (Costa, 1936:7). us, Roldós obtained substantial income that allowed him to launch the new newspaper: not in vain, “Las Noticias’” stickers were, needless to say, a great success and soon spread throughout Catalonia (...) In this way, the subscription rates grew at an unprecedented rate.” (Costa, 1936:7). Coupons are often featured in Las Noticias in the form of advertisements as they did in other newspapers. Readers had to cut out and send them to the newspaper’s headquarters to obtain slightly discounted oleographs and other works of art- reproduced by the Sociedad de Artistas Españolas, also owned by Roldós-. ese artworks rewarded its readers’ quarterly subscription since they received one of these artworks as a gift, which was usually part of a collection that encouraged readers to maintain their loyalty throughout the year. e newspaper quickly prevented any potential subscription losses during the summer months, so it announced: “Warning, we inform our subscribers that those who leave Barcelona during the summer months may continue to receive the newspaper at the same price as in Barcelona by notifying this administration. e gift will also be sent to the designated address” (Las Noticias, 1896:1).Several booklets were also published in instalments for this purpose- for example, the novel La mujer del payaso, by Javier Montepín or Ni más ni menos, by E. Marly. Current event sections were also published in chapters, such as “Memorias de un reo de muerte” (Memoirs of a death row inmate), in 1896- which recounts an interview with Silvestre Lluis over several issues, a prisoner awaiting execution or “Proceso Ruidoso: La secuestradora de niños” (e Noisy Proceeding: e Child Kidnapper), which narrates the macabre event surrounding Enriqueta Martí in March 1912.ese initiatives allowed the newspaper to be disseminated “in such an extraordinary way that everyone was surprised, and after a few months, Las Noticias gained prots and a subscription that only some newspapers could do in several years” (Gaceta de Cataluña, cfr. en Las Noticias, 1918:2). ese actions allowed Roldós’ new journalistic enterprise, considered by many as a “ridiculous adventure” due to its lack of editorial experience, to go head-to-head with the most widely circulated newspaper at the time El Noticiero Universal (Costa, 1936:7), and the model Las Noticias was based on. erefore,it is logical that Mr Roldós “Before starting a work of such magnitude, (I) wanted to follow the same route as the great Valencian journalist” (La Veu de Catalunya, 1936:6). us, in 1898, Las Noticias published 6000 copies, less than leading newspapers such as La Vanguardia, with 14, 000, Diari de Barcelona, which circulated 9,000, and El Diluvio and El Noticiero Universal, both circulating 8000 copies. In 1905, just a few years later, Las Noticias became the newspaper with the second largest circulation with 11,000 copies- only behind La Vanguardia with 18, 000, and overtaking El Noticiero Universal by a thousand copies (Figueres, 2014:171-188; García-Nieto, 1958).According to Barrera, the national newspapers A.B.C. (1903), El Debate (1910) and El Sol (1917) stand out as the “newspapers that led the way and championed the necessary renewal of the press during the rst third of the 20th century” (Barrera, 2007: 245).