The Press of the Liberal Triennium in Catalonia (1820-1823)

Abstract

During the Liberal Triennium there is a real explosion of the press throughout Spain
that includes various formats, typologies and political cultures. Freedom of the press and
intense political debate stimulate the publication of newspapers in towns and cities where
they had not previously been published and their multiplication in the country’s large cities.
The press, in addition, has a fundamental role in the formulation and diffusion of the diverse
political cultures grouped around the revolution and the counter-revolution. In Catalonia,
the Triennium press presents a great typological diversity: number of pages and periodicity,
and ideological: constitutional, exalted, moderate, realistic and cultural; and a considerable
territorial distribution, despite the concentration in the city of Barcelona and, to a lesser extent,
in that of Tarragona, since newspapers are edited and printed in a total of ten Catalan cities and
six of them are not provincial capitals. The chronology of the Catalan press is closely related
to political life. The moments of maximum constitutional journalistic effervescence coincide
with the revolution of March 1820, the street confrontation between exalted and moderate in
late 1821 and early 1822, and the realistic war of the summer-autumn of 1822. While the
effervescence of the realistic press coincides with the realistic war of the autumn of 1822 and
with the French occupation of some cities in the spring and summer of 1823.