Although he said he felt “just a journalist” and boasted of having been born in a newspaper, Santiago Rey Fernández-Latorre was much more than that. The president of the Corporación Voz de Galicia – a department store created around the newspaper founded by his grandfather, Juan Fernández Latorre – was for decades one of the most influential men in the community due to his dominant position in the Galician media landscape. And it was not only because of what he published or decided not to publish. He never sought to be a simple notary of the facts, but rather a leading actor. His voice did not tremble – neither the printed one nor his own – to send orders and threats to the leaders, both in Madrid and in Santiago, on any issue that concerned him and that he claimed in the name of an autonomy of which he felt he was the main defender – and sometimes the only one. Not paying attention to him came at a high price in some offices.
Two conversations can provide an example of this way of acting. The first of them took place in January 2003, on the eve of the Council of Ministers that José María Aznar would hold in the City Hall of A Coruña, a María Pita Palace converted into a fort, in the midst of the Prestige crisis. As the former mayor, the socialist Francisco Vázquez – a great friend of the deceased and a member like him of what is called entrance hall In Coruña – Mariano Rajoy, then government spokesman, called King to talk about the next day’s meeting and asked him if they had planned to approve an external port for the city. The minister told him no, to which the editor replied: “Then you better not come.” The next day, Aznar announced in his appearance the construction of an infrastructure that, 20 years and a billion euros later, is beginning to make sense. The editors of The voice who until that moment had prepared very critical information on the management of the disaster from Madrid, noticed how it was becoming increasingly difficult to disturb the central government.
The other conversation took place during the bipartisan government, the three-and-a-half-year break in the Xunta between the presidencies of Manuel Fraga and Alberto Núñez Feijóo. This was recounted by one of the participants, then vice-president, the nationalist Anxo Quintana. “A nurse from Allariz cannot come and change the economic framework of Galicia,” he warned Rey in reference to the wind energy competition that his executive was launching, a plan that opened the distribution of the energy cake beyond the usual hands. Quintana did not give in and even supported the birth of a new newspaper to support his position. Two crimes that the editor took upon himself by hardening his editorial line to the limit against the BNG and the vice-president himself. The two-party system lost the following elections – due to the seat given up by the Bloc in the region of A Coruña, where the A Coruña newspaper had the most influence – and Feijóo ended up defeating the wind plan. Since his inauguration, the embrace he received from Iberdrola’s president, Ignacio Galán, will go down in history. Those who surrounded the powerful publisher at the time say that Santiago Rey celebrated the defeat of Anxo Quintana much more than the triumph of Alberto Núñez Feijóo.
Rey did very little of himself in public. His opinions, in a newspaper devoid of editorials, appeared with some regularity under such bombastic headlines as In La Voz we say no, Don’t let them fool us or the I protest, a series of letters to readers in which he was able to express the opinion of those who queued in front of the Inem offices, which gave its name to the book that compiled them in 2016. In the following days, the main signatures of the newspaper – Fernando Ónega, Barreiro Rivas, Blanco Valdés… – echoed his words in their own columns, shamelessly praising the leader’s vision.
Sabón, the fort of the King
The publisher became strong in Sabón. It was there, a few kilometres from A Coruña, in the industrial area of Arteixo where the group’s headquarters are located – a stone’s throw from Inditex – that he received those who came to see him, to confide in him, to do business or – in Quintana’s words – “to give accounts”. A fortress that opened once a year for the Fernández Latorre Awards, an event in which all the political and economic power of Galicia sat at his table. Anyone who challenged this quote would often find it in the pages of the newspaper for weeks.
In his few appearances outside, Rey has not hidden his harmony with Feijóo. In 2014, after scandals forced the popular mayor of Santiago, Gerardo Conde Roa, to resign and implicated almost his entire government, the president of the Galician PP decided to impose one of his loyalists, the councilor Agustín Hernández, as councilor. Conde Roa’s replacement, Ángel Currás, had neither the approval of the party leadership nor that of the party leadership. The voicewho had opted to replace the current number two of the Galician PP, Paula Prado. Journalists knew something was up when Currás did not show up at the inauguration ceremony of the new rector of the University of Santiago. It was the first sign that Feijóo had given the order to eliminate him. In case of doubt, that day, the president of the Xunta and the president of Grupo Voz arrived together at the rectorate, the Pazo de Fonseca, after showing off while walking through the city’s old town.
If their friendships were clear, then entrance hall political and economic leader of the north of the community, who is still accused today from Vigo of having forced the merger of the savings banks that ended up causing their bankruptcy and public bailout -, his enemies were even more so. Sports stars could see that their exploits were lost in the inside pages due to personal antipathy; The death of the former president of the International Olympic Committee, Juan Antonio Samaranch, was reported in two columns and accompanied by a photo in which he appeared dressed as a Falangist.
There is more: the bipartisan Minister of Culture, Ánxela Bugallo, became persona non grata when she had her turn to manage the Cidade da Cultura – the pharaonic mausoleum of Fraga in Santiago, which only became a problem in Sabón after the defeat of León de Vilalba – and especially when he managed to open to the public the Pazo de Meirás, where Rey had played as a child with Franco’s heirs.
But his biggest confrontation was surely the one he had with the president of SuperdeportAugusto César Lendoiro, during the club’s golden years, when Lendoiro called him a “pursuer” and vetoed The voice at press conferences. The club now belongs to Abanca, the entity that bought the rescued bank from the savings banks. The owner of the entity and president of Deportivo, Juan Carlos Escotet, the last Fernández Latorre winner, sits as honorary patron of the Foundation of the same name, called upon to assume the enormous inheritance of the King, in front of the children of his first marriage.
From newspaper to communications group
During his 60 years at the helm of the family business, Rey transformed a provincial newspaper into a media group that owns a radio station, a demographics company, an audiovisual production company… and that, for a time, even owned the only television in Galicia that ended up operating as such. He implemented his own model of focusing on local issues, so that a single newspaper has more than a dozen different editions depending on where it is read. No matter how small the village, Coca Cola and The voice of Galicia.
This growth was favored by its ability to monopolize public subsidies thanks to its harmony with the popular governments of the Xunta. It was not uncommon for presidents to take advantage of events convened by society to make big announcements. During the covid pandemic, when legislation was legislated at lightning speed, every time there was a meeting of the Galician Executive, the editors of the Official Gazette of Galicia would browse the newspaper’s website to try to guess what awaited them.
To display a button. The obituary of The voice stands out as an example of Rey’s “bold and committed character” who, during the economic crisis “that caused many companies to fail between 2008 and 2013, took the decision to undertake one of the major investments for the future, such as the acquisition of the new rotary press “which once again places the company at the forefront of European technology”. This modernization plan, which included the new rotary press, amounted to 22 million euros. The Xunta covered 10% thanks to the largest subsidy granted in 2011 by the Galician Institute for Economic Promotion (IGAPE). The Rajoy government, for its part, added another 2.6 million.
His power was such that, after learning of his death, all political leaders – regardless of the greatest distance or proximity to his theses – did not run out of praise. “Clear analyst, innovative businessman and citizen committed to his territory. We will miss him greatly in all his facets. Me too”, wrote the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, on the social network For his successor at the head of the Xunta, Alfonso Rueda, “Galicia loses an essential figure in our history”.
In a message full of criticism of her parish, the leader of the BNG, Ana Pontón, presented her condolences to the family and workers of The Voice, “who, thanks to his work as an editor, became the most widely read media in Galicia and one of the main ones in the State.” For his part, the leader of the PSdeG, Gómez Besteiro, spoke of the deceased as a “pillar of Galician journalism,” while the mayor of La Coruña, also a socialist, Inés Rey, considered him “one of the most important people in the sector.” history of journalism in this country.
The death at the age of 85 of Santiago Rey – who had been away from the front for months due to his health – reopens the unknowns about the future of the largest communications group in Galicia, a more than desirable spoils for the large conglomerates due to their quasi-monopolistic position in the community. Waiting to see how this will be resolved Succession in the Galician style and who monopolized power once his two sons were removed from the empire years ago, the death of Santiago Rey puts an end to an era and a model: that of the plenipotentiary editor who acted as the supreme authority. Until today, if Pedro Sánchez, Alfonso Rueda and Fernández-Latorre and a worker of The voice If they had given him a message for “the president,” he would have had no doubt about which of the three he was supposed to deliver it to. Something his replacement surely won’t be able to say. Whoever it is.
