The government has acknowledged that it is seeking to limit institutional advertising in the autonomous communities as part of its democratic regeneration plan. The aim is to prevent certain “media or pseudo-media” from surviving thanks to this type of advertising. This is despite the fact that Moncloa is gradually increasing the money invested for this purpose. In fact, Pedro Sanchez He is already doubling the spending on this item of his predecessor, Mariano Rajoy.
According to the reports of publicity and institutional communication prepared by the Secretary of State for Communication (SEC), Sánchez spent 309 million euros in institutional campaigns between 2019 and 2023. Rajoy, for his part, spent 163 million between 2012 and 2017.
For this calculation, the millions spent in 2011 and 2018 are not taken into account, years in which the president changed and in which the current government had to act with the money budgeted by the previous executive.
We can therefore conclude that Sánchez spent twice as much in five years of his mandate as Rajoy did in six. On average, Rajoy spent 27.2 million per year. Sánchez, for his part, spends on average 61.9 million per year, more than 34 million more per year than its predecessor.
This Tuesday, the government announced the outlines of the so-called democratic regeneration plan that Sánchez drew up after returning from his five-day reflection period. Despite these expenses and this trend, the Executive intends to obtain the necessary support from Congress to reform the legislation on institutional advertising.
According to the text published by Moncloa, “it is necessary to set limits on the financing that public administrations can dedicate to the media, so that there are no media that are essentially promoted or dependent on public administrations.”
This measure is aimed in the short term at certain autonomous communities, mainly the PP, but the government will also have to apply certain measures, such as transparency. Moncloa does not systematically make public the recipients of all this institutional publicity. and if the reform continues, it will have to do so.
EL ESPAÑOL has repeatedly tried to find out what the distribution of government institutional advertising is in 2023. It has done so through questions to the Transparency Portal in which the different departments have constantly referred to the reports prepared by the SEC.
These documents contain general guidelines for dissemination, but do not answer most of the questions posed by this newspaper. Therefore, They do not explain the criteria for broadcasting the campaigns or the media in which they were inserted.. Nor the amounts allocated to the various media.
Last year, the Sánchez government carried out a total of 126 campaigns worth 90.3 million euros. According to the Institutional Report on Advertising and Communication, the ministry that benefited the most was Economic Affairswhich executed 16.12% of what was executed, or more than 14.6 million euros.
Despite the political emphasis on institutional advertising, Sánchez has not only spent more than Rajoy, but continues to plan to do so. For 2024, the Government plans to devote 138 million euros to institutional advertisingits highest figure. However, these data are not definitive and we will not know until 2025 what amount was finally executed.
Not executed
In fact, it is very likely that this figure is very low since Until June 30, the execution of the Government’s institutional advertising is practically zeroIndeed, when questioned by this media on the Transparency Portal, many ministries acknowledged that at that date they had not launched any institutional advertising campaign.
In perspective, it might seem that despite his spending, Sánchez is investing less than he did then. José Luis Rodriguez ZapateroSince the current law requiring the declaration came into force in 2006, the previous socialist president has spent 857 million euros on institutional advertising.
However, the reality is not the same. In Zapatero’s time, commercial campaigns were included in the calculation of institutional advertising, which is no longer the case today and is presented in detail. That is why it seems that the figures are much higher, especially since the money dedicated to commercial advertising is always higher than that dedicated to institutional advertising.
