Public money in the media

📰 Public money in the media

Spanish public administrations fund the media in three ways: they pay for the public broadcasters (RTVE and the regional corporations), they buy advertising in the media (also through their public companies) and they award direct subsidies to publishing companies. All figures are given per inhabitant and adjusted for inflation, in 2025 euros. To see what a particular outlet has received, use the «Who gets what» search.

Public broadcasters

What central government pays RTVE and what the regions pay their radio and television corporations: public service compensation, subsidies, programme contracts and capital contributions. In 2025 this came to 23.2 € per inhabitant for RTVE and 26.5 € for the regional corporations (calculated over the whole population of Spain, including the regions that have no broadcaster of their own).

Since 2010, when it stopped carrying advertising, RTVE's figure includes the levy paid by telecoms and television operators and the fee for the use of the radio spectrum. Years with extraordinary payments (the 2021 capital grant for RTVE Play, the additional 100 million in 2024) show up as peaks.

By region

Public funding for each regional corporation in 2025, per inhabitant of the region. It ranges from 75.8 € in País Vasco to 9.8 € in Castilla y León. Navarre, Cantabria, La Rioja, Ceuta and Melilla have no broadcaster of their own.

To compare what each broadcaster costs with how much it is watched, the table divides the euros per inhabitant by the audience share of its channels in the region (the sum of all its television channels). It is an approximation: the money also pays for radio, the website and in-house production. The cheapest per audience share point is Radio Televisión Madrid (Telemadrid) (Comunidad de Madrid) and the most expensive, EPRTVIB (IB3) (Illes Balears).

By party

Adding up regions and years between 2017 and 2025, and attributing each year to the party governing the region on 1 July, the table compares each party's share of the money contributed with its share of the population it governed (if all spent the same per inhabitant, the ratio would be 1). Only regions with their own broadcaster count. Under the PP, regions contributed an average of 19.3 € per inhabitant per year; under the PSOE, 24.4 €.

It should be read with caution: the nationalist parties each govern only one region, and three of the regions that contribute most per inhabitant (Basque Country, Catalonia and Galicia) have a co-official language and their laws task the public broadcaster with promoting it. Moreover, the corporations were created decades ago, so much of each government's spending is inherited.

Central government advertising

The General State Administration reports every year on the cost of its advertising campaigns: the institutional campaigns of ministries and agencies (Law 29/2005) and the commercial campaigns of its public companies and bodies (Loterías y Apuestas del Estado, AENA, Correos, Renfe, Paradores…). In 2025 it spent 1.79 € per inhabitant on institutional campaigns and 1.71 € on commercial ones. Institutional spending peaked in 2007, at 8.51 €.

Annual average for each Government (each year counts for whoever was prime minister on 1 July). Actual spending always falls short of what was planned: the last column is the share of the annual plan that was actually spent.

Some years include extraordinary campaigns, such as those during the pandemic in 2020-2022.

In which media

Breakdown of media space purchased for institutional campaigns by type of media. Digital has gone from 2.6 % in 2006 to 27.6 % in 2025, and print from 36.4 % to 13.4 %.

Which groups receive it

Since the 2025 Report, the first under the European Media Freedom Act, the Government publishes how much it paid each media group or platform. The top three groups took 37 % of institutional media buying, and the digital platforms (Google, Meta, TikTok…), 11 %.

Advertising by regions, town councils and public companies

Regions and town councils also buy advertising, and only some publish how much and in which media. These are the ones that do so as open data or in reports from which the data can be extracted. Not all measure the same thing: some give the amount spent and others the amount contracted, some including VAT and others not (the «Comparable» column marks those that cannot be compared directly with the rest). Catalonia also gives the net amount, without the media agency's commission.

Galicia, the Canary Islands, the Balearic Islands, Asturias, Cantabria, Castile-La Mancha and Andalusia do not publish their spending by outlet; the Community of Madrid publishes its media plans (since 2020, what was planned by campaign and outlet, excluding VAT), but not what was actually spent. The Basque Country figures come from the reports the Basque Government submits to Parliament, compiled by gobiernovasco.marketing.

The five groups that receive most from each administration, in the latest year with data:

Public companies

Public companies run their own campaigns, which do not always appear in the institutional advertising reports. Those of central government are covered in the annual commercial advertising report; Loterías y Apuestas del Estado is by far the biggest spender.

For regional and municipal companies there are only data for those that publish them: Canal de Isabel II (its media plans by campaign and outlet since 2019; its annual accounts, which also include public relations and sponsorship, are kept only as a reference), FGC, Loteries de Catalunya, EMT and Madrid Destino, among others. Metro de Madrid does not allow its data to be downloaded.

Contracts with media companies

In addition to advertising campaigns, administrations contract directly with the media: insertions and adverts, sponsorship of forums, conferences, galas and awards organised by the media themselves, special supplements, magazines and subscriptions to news agencies. They are almost always minor contracts, worth a few thousand euros, that do not appear in the institutional advertising reports. Searching the Public Sector Procurement Platform for contracts awarded to a reviewed list of some 800 private media companies, in 2025 they added up to at least 57.00 M € (1.16 € per inhabitant) in 12,631 contracts, 96 % of them minor contracts.

It is a minimum: the Platform does not include minor contracts from the regions that have their own platform (Catalonia, Basque Country, Andalusia, Community of Madrid, Galicia, Navarre and La Rioja) nor those of some large town councils that do not publish them there, and advertising bought through media agencies appears in the agency's name. That is why regions are not compared with each other. The amounts are what was awarded, excluding VAT, not what was paid. The series starts in 2019 because more bodies publish every year.

Cities of more than 100,000 inhabitants that contract most with the media per inhabitant (2022-2025 average, only what is published on the Platform):

The largest sponsorship and event contracts with private media:

Subsidies to private media

Direct aid to companies, cooperatives and associations publishing private press, radio, television and digital media: structural aid, aid for the use of co-official languages, for digitalisation and artificial intelligence or for specific projects. It does not include public media (already counted above) or aid to journalists or universities.

The National Subsidies Database only allows grants from the last four years to be consulted, which is why the series starts in 2018; SpainFacts keeps its own copy so as not to lose the years as they drop out. The current year is marked as incomplete.

By region

Subsidies from the region and from its town councils, provincial councils or island councils in 2025, per inhabitant of the region. Central government subsidies are spread across the whole of Spain and are not included here.

The regions that do not appear did not award aid to private media that year or did not publish it in the National Subsidies Database. The Basque Government does not record its aid to the media there, so in the Basque Country only that of the provincial councils and town councils is recorded.

Who receives them

The 25 companies and organisations that have received most since 2018, adding up all years in today's euros. Aid to individuals (self-employed journalists, for example) is counted in the totals but not shown by name.

Methodology and sources

• Regional broadcasters: CNMC, Economic Report on the Telecommunications and Audiovisual Sector, subsidies and transfers received by each corporation (radio and television together), 2017-2025; the charts by region have been transcribed by hand and the sum matches the CNMC total. Since 2022 the CNMC only gives euros per inhabitant: the millions are reconstructed using INE population data. The CNMC does not include the Valencian Community: for À Punt, the shareholder contributions from the CVMC accounts in the General Account of the Generalitat (2017-2023) and the execution of programme 462D on dadesobertes.gva.es (2024-2025) are used. In Castile and León and Murcia the television channel is a private company with a public programme contract.
• RTVE: annual accounts of the RTVE Corporation, subsidies note: public service compensation from the General State Budget, other subsidies, the spectrum fee and operators' contributions (Law 8/2009). For 2008-2009 these are the group accounts, when it still carried advertising.
• Audiences: annual audience share from Barlovento Comunicación with Kantar Media data (individuals aged 4 and over, including guests).
• Central government advertising: Institutional Advertising and Communication Commission, annual plans and reports (Law 29/2005), actual cost of campaigns since 2006, by type of media, and since the 2025 Report by media group (annex IV of the institutional report and annex III of the commercial advertising report). The actual cost includes production and evaluation as well as media buying; the breakdown by group is media buying only. The reports do not say whether the amounts include VAT (judging by how they are rounded, they appear to). What each outlet is paid also depends on the discounts negotiated by the media agencies that contract the campaigns.
• Advertising by regions and town councils: open data from the Generalitat de Catalunya, the Junta de Castilla y León, the Government of Aragon, the Government of Navarre, the Region of Murcia, Madrid City Council and Barcelona City Council; PDF reports from the Generalitat Valenciana (with its instrumental public sector) and, for the Basque Country, the compilation of the Basque Government's reports by gobiernovasco.marketing (Jaime Gómez-Obregón, CC BY 4.0). Outlet names are grouped by media group using a SpainFacts concordance table.
• Public companies: the commercial campaigns chapter of the annual reports of the Institutional Advertising and Communication Commission (by body, 2015-2025); media plans and annual accounts of Canal de Isabel II (plans by campaign and outlet since 2019; account 627, advertising, publicity and public relations, only as a reference); media plans of the Community of Madrid (2020-2025, planned by campaign and outlet, excluding VAT); TMB transparency portal; and the companies that appear in the data of their region or town council. Since 2024 the Renfe figure only includes Renfe Operadora's campaigns, not Renfe Viajeros' commercial ones.
• Contracts with the media: Public Sector Procurement Platform (tenders from hosted profiles, aggregated regional platforms and minor contracts), since 2018, and the register of contracting bodies to identify which administration is contracting. Only contractors on a hand-reviewed list of tax IDs of media companies count (press publishers, radio stations, private television channels, digital outlets and news agencies; excluding advertising agencies, technical production companies and book publishers). The type of contract is inferred from the text of its purpose. Absurd amounts (framework agreements with the total amount) are discarded.
• Subsidies: National Subsidies Database (IGAE). A hand-reviewed list of calls for aid to private media is used (criteria in the SpainFacts repository); amount granted, not paid, by year of award. Public media, press associations and scholarships are excluded.
• Constant euros using the INE's CPI and population from the municipal register; each Government's party according to the SpainFacts table of presidents.