There are a number of other cultural and intellectual academies and institutes, most of which date from the 18th and the 19th centuries. These include the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts, the Royal Academy of History, and the Royal National Academy of Medicine. The most prestigious institution for research is the Council for Scientific Research (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas; CSIC), an autonomous public research organization based in Madrid and affiliated with the government Ministry of Education and Science. It was created in 1940 by the Franco regime to promote and manage research. Today there are branches of the CSIC throughout Spain, with the largest number of research centres being located in Madrid.
In its attempt to put itself at the centre of the international Spanish-language cultural world, Spain awards the Cervantes Prize, comparable to the Nobel Prize for Literature for all authors writing in Spanish. Among the recipients have been many of the leading Latin American writers. An agency for international cooperation maintains economic and cultural ties with the countries of Latin America and other countries with cultural links to Spain.
One of the most interesting cultural initiatives was the creation in 1991 of the Cervantes Institute. This government agency, modeled on the British Council and the German Goethe Institute, is responsible for promoting the study of Spanish language and culture abroad. In the early 21st century, the Cervantes Institute operated in more than 60 cities in some 30 countries throughout the world. Sports and recreation
Sports play an important part in the daily life of the Spanish people, and each region has its favourite forms of play. In mountainous Catalonia, skiing and other winter sports are popular; along the Valencia coast, windsurfing, scuba diving, and surfing have countless enthusiasts; in the Basque provinces, jai alai (a kind of racquetball) is a favourite pastime; and in Asturias and Andalusia, equestrian events draw large numbers of spectators and participants alike.
Despite the international controversy over bullfighting, the corrida de toros (“running of bulls”) is still fairly popular in Spain. A staple of Spanish culture dating back to antiquity, bullfighting is considered the national spectacle, a rich pageant more akin to a beautifully choreographed ballet than a sporting event. It is seen as a heroic, albeit bloody, test of wills involving courage, intelligence, grace, and elegance. Spain’s foremost matadors have been national heroes of mythic stature, as Manolete was in the 1940s. The season runs from March to October, with bullfights typically occurring on Sunday afternoons in major cities and in almost every town during local festivals. The mecca of bullfighting in Spain is in Madrid, at the Las Ventas bullring.
Juli, El; bullfightingSpanish matador El Juli engaging a bull, June 6, 2010, Barcelona.© Natursports/Shutterstock.com
Spain’s National Olympic Committee was founded and recognized in 1924. The 1992 Summer Olympic Games were held in Barcelona, where Spanish athletes earned 13 gold medals, including for football (soccer), swimming, running, and walking. Spaniard Juan António Samaranch served as president of the International Olympic Committee from 1980 to 2001.
Football was introduced into Spain by the British at the end of the 19th century (British miners established the first Spanish football club, Recreativo, in Huelva in 1889), and a professional league was set up in the 1920s. By the 1950s football had surpassed bullfighting in popularity. Spain’s leading clubs have a distinguished record in European competitions; indeed, Real Madrid and FC Barcelona are two of football’s most famous organizations. The Spanish men’s national team won the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) European championship in 1964 but then was long saddled with a reputation for failing to win “big” international matches. Spectacularly reversing its fortunes, Spain won the 2008 UEFA championship, the 2010 World Cup, and another UEFA championship in 2012 with a team that some characterized as the greatest national team in the sport’s history.
At the end of the 1980s, football was challenged by basketball, whose popularity soared after Spain won the silver medal in the sport at the 1984 Olympics. In the early 21st century, a pair of Spanish brothers, Pau and Marc Gasol, became stars in the National Basketball Association. Other popular spectator sports include hockey on roller skates, motorcycle racing, and tennis. Cycling also has a large following, and Spanish cyclist Miguel Indurain was a multiple winner of the Tour de France.
Historically, the country has had a fairly poor record in protecting its natural resources, including Spain’s rare wetlands Doñana National Park, from industrial development; despite this, Spaniards are avid users of their country’s many parks and picturesque countryside. Media and publishing The press
At the beginning of the 21st century, Spain had nearly 200 daily newspapers. By far the most widely read, and the most influential, is the liberal El País, published in Madrid and in other important cities and regions. ABC and El Mundo are also leading dailies. Published continuously in Barcelona since 1881, the conservative La Vanguardia" class="md-crosslink">La Vanguardia has the widest Castilian-language readership in Catalonia. The leading regional daily newspapers are El Periódico in Catalonia, La Voz de Galicia in Galicia, and El Correo Español–El Pueblo Vasco in the Basque Country, all published in Castilian. There are other newspapers serving regional and local interests that are published in local languages. There are also several newspapers that specialize in areas such as sports and business. Marca, a sport daily, is the most widely disseminated daily newspaper in Spain. By the late 1990s most leading newspapers also published digital versions on the Internet. Yet, despite this large number of newspapers, overall readership in Spain is low by European standards. By the early 21st century, Spaniards read about two-thirds fewer newspapers than did the average reader in the EU, and most Spaniards got their news from nonprint sources.
There also are many weekly and monthly magazines published in Spain. The most popular and successful are those, such as ¡Hola!, that deal largely in gossip about the lives of celebrities, both national and international. On the other hand, there are also a number of serious political magazines. In general, the boom in publishing that occurred in the aftermath of Franco’s death had receded by the early 21st century. Television and radio
Television was introduced into Spain in 1956. During the Franco regime and the first few years of the constitutional monarchy, there were only two television stations, both part of the government-owned and -controlled Radio-Televisión Española (RTVE). They still broadcast today, solely in Castilian, and have been split into separate organizations: Radio Nacional de España (RNE) and Televisión Española (TVE). Radio Exterior de España (REE) provides overseas services, broadcasting in 10 languages.
In 1983 the Catalan and Basque autonomous governments established television stations that broadcast in the regional languages; a Galician-language station began operation two years later. At the end of the 1980s, the number of television stations available to Spaniards increased rapidly. Moreover, in 1989 the government introduced legislation permitting the establishment of privately owned television stations. Three of these began to broadcast in 1990, and in subsequent years several others began operations. There are now several hundred television stations serving national, regional, and local audiences. At the same time, the availability of satellite dishes, which many Spaniards acquired, gave them access to channels broadcasting in a variety of languages, especially English, French, German, and Italian.