The influence of democracy in the practice of public relations in Spain

Abstract

This article presents an exploratory study of the current status of public relations in Spain on the basis of elements and indicators applied to other countries in the study The Global Public Relations Handbook (2009). Spain is one of the most notable absentees from the study; this article therefore fills a hole in current public relations research and theory. The conclusion is that Spain is a country that has undergone radical change, from a dictatorship to one of the world's most democratic systems, substantially transforming its economic system, its culture and its society. This transformation has had a crucial effect on the practice of those professions which have freedom of expression as their legal foundation; one such example is public relations, which has grown from an emerging industry into an established profession.

Normal is not normative: Public relations indicators from a Spanish secondary political and economic region

“…As critical scholars have pointed out (L’Etang et al, 2015), the socio-political and economic context affects how the profession develops (Gutiérrez and Rodríguez-Salcedo, 2009). Thus, although the contextual issues derived from globalization, such as online communication, have been adopted by the professional practice, the late take-off of Public Relations in Spain (Xifra, 2011) and its limited location in Madrid and Barcelona for several years (Rodríguez-Salcedo & Watson, 2017) could be the reason why structural issues, such as the need for strategic planning, have not been consolidated in those regions far from political and economic poles. In this way, the institutionalization of strategic communication in Europe (Tench, Verhoeven & Zerfass, 2009) must be relativized, taking into account the historic background and the peculiarities of each country, in which different realities can coexist.…”