If, as the classic said, a newspaper is a nation speaking to itself, this month we can celebrate that THE WORLD celebrates 30 years accompanying the conversation of all Spaniards. Informing them, helping them form an opinion, taking them day by day an exclusive scope, a novel report, a brilliant column. Three decades ago, a handful of journalists and businessmen - the sadly disappeared Alfonso de Salas, Balbino Fraga, Juan Gónzález and Pedro J. Ramírez, our first director - undertook a bold project to share with the reader a value system rooted in the best liberalism from which the Constitution emanates: political pluralism, individual freedom, the search for justice. And above all, the tireless persecution of the truth to offer it to public scrutiny, despite whoever weighs it. We assume with gratitude the condition of "institution of the media field, with all that that implies", which His Majesty Philip VI attributed to THE WORLD during his speech at the commemoration ceremony held yesterday at the Palace Hotel.

Without this newspaper, the recent history of Spain would not only have been different but surely worse. Because, as the director, Francisco Rosell recalled, the basic principle of journalism continues to consist of " telling the power what he does not want to hear or revealing what he is interested in stealing from public opinion."

And the future? A world in constant change unfolds before us, full of uncertainties that affect both the health of democracy and the function of journalism, since we know that there is not one without the other. The feeling of institutional deterioration is growing in the face of the push of populisms and nationalisms; the truth loses ground in the face of that victory of indifference to the lie they call post-truth; and the messages are tinged with an increasingly primary and divisive emotionality that blunts the citizen's use of reason. Faced with these threats, journalism takes its full meaning as an illustrated product. It is no longer just the traditional mission of exercising a counterweight to political or economic power; now it is also important to defend the freedom threatened by disaffection, infantilism, the lack of commitment of the society itself that journalism serves. To do this, as the executive president of the Editorial Unit, Antonio Fernández-Galiano, pointed out, we must all acquire a commitment to the truth of the facts and the equanimity of the interpretations: we from the newspaper and citizens from the effort that requires knowledge.

Thanks to the leadership of a header with more than 20 million unique users, THE WORLD will continue to speak to the nation independently, without any more ties than its liberal spirit admitted in the beginning. Today we begin to write the history of our next 30 years.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

  • Editorial
  • Spain

Tribune We, those from before, do not forget Alfonso de Salas

Impression Culture: a very positive trend

EditorialErrejón accelerates the implosion of Podemos