Teresa Salas i Prat analyzes in this paper the Tele/eXpres evening newspaper (1964-1980) that was published during the last stage of the Franco regime and during the Transition. Through a newspaper investigation and the use of oral sources, we try to reconstruct the history of this important newspaper, which, with directors like Manuel Ibáñez Escofet, came to be published for almost 15 years, not without problems with justice caused, especially , for his criticism of the Franco regime.
This paper intends to make a first approximation to the history of Tele / eXpres (1964-80), the first newspaper of private initiative born in Catalonia after the Civil War. The years that he lived, of capital importance for the country, conditioned the entrepreneur and the project and this is precisely the starting point of the research and what I have tried to reflect in the study. At the same time, however, I have also tried to make it clear because it is remembered as a progressive, Catalanist and liberal newspaper, three qualifiers that the professionals who worked have no doubt to use when defining it.
The oral source is the basis of the investigation. Being aware, however, of the risk that this type of source entails, because memory is selective and reality can be invented, I have tried to contrast the information to the maximum, choosing different voices that have given me conflicting versions of the same fact, such as I have reflected. Specifically, I have compiled the testimony of about twenty people, including newspaper editors and editors (some of whom held executive positions), as well as a CEO, one of the secretaries and the person in charge of the photographic archive. As a difficulty, I have met with the refusal of people who were key to the newspaper and who, for different reasons, have not wanted to answer my questions. This is the case of the first director, Sempronio, and one of the owners, the Count of Godó. (Keep in mind, also, that three of the eight directors and two of the three entrepreneurs have already disappeared).
