El Español

After 25 years as executive editor of a national newspaper, journalist Pedro J. Ramírez challenged the traditional model of the business. In 2015, he founded a generalist digital outlet that could compete in scope and influence with legacy media, but free of the "heavy structures of the traditional print outlets" and "independent of any political, economic, and institutional power", as he publicly stated at the time.

El Español was born as a personal and ambitious project. It hired 100 journalists and sought the support of readers to not depend on banks. With a "liberal, reformist, centrist and progressive" ideology, it promoted a crowdfunding campaign that raised 3.6m euros, beating the international record of Dutch outlet De Correspondent.

With that amount, the severance pay for his dismissal from the newspaper El Mundo, as well as investors' contributions, El Español was born with a capital of 18m euros. In four years, it became profitable. Its revenues come from advertising, events, and from its 25,000 subscribers.

Today it employs 160 people, has expanded its local information with agreements with regional media, and is the audience leader among digital media in Spain, ahead of several legacy media. "We are delighted with the reach we have achieved," its chief information officer, Daniel Muñoz, said. "We have to keep growing in influence."

The symbol of El Español is the lion, a very common animal in Spanish symbology, "indomitable and with the objective of seeking the truth before anything else". In his speech to shareholders in June 2022, Ramírez recalled the outlet's pillars: "To investigate the abuses of all powers, to stimulate constructive debate in public life, the construction of European unity and the promotion of globalisation from the perspective of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)."

Last updated: January 2023

Last updated date: April 2023