The Government of Cantabria is going to pay 4.5 million euros of public money to buy the facilities of the newspaper ALERTA, located on the outskirts of Santander, to install the Regional Printing Press there in an operation that is justified by the Executive chaired by María José Sáenz de Buruaga (PP) for the “savings” of the current rent, but which has an important media and political impact given the historical nature of a newspaper that became one of the pillars news programs of the defunct Movement Press Network during the dictatorship and had years of intense political ties with the Popular Party, intervening in its favor even in the middle of the electoral campaign during a controversial day of reflection.
The operation, of which the Buruaga Executive has not yet officially reported, but which it has confirmed to EFE, has been carried out secretly these months with the owner of the newspaper, Ciriaco Díaz Porras, who has been directing it for decades, after taking over the reins after the medium was auctioned in the 80s, since it came to belong to the public media instituted by Franco’s regime after the Civil War.
After carrying out this important economic operation, the newspaper ALERTA will move its offices to a nearby office more in line with the current size of its staff and is studying its future, possibly becoming a digital newspaper, an aspect that is currently compatible with a paper edition with a Very limited run of copies. It currently has its headquarters and printing press in the Primero de Mayo neighborhood, on the outskirts of Santander, in a warehouse that will be transferred to the Government of Cantabria for an amount of around 4.5 million euros.
The Government of Cantabria includes this real estate operation in others in which it is currently immersed, rescuing with public money different institutions immersed in serious economic and viability problems, such as the purchase of the central building of the Chamber of Commerce, where it plans to move the Ministry of Economy, a move that will cost the Cantabrians five million euros and that already has the approval of the chamber governing bodies on the future of the property located on several floors of the Plaza Porticada in Santander.
Diaz Porras
Ciriaco Díaz Porras was a deputy for the UCD in the early days of democracy. It was precisely Adolfo Suárez’s party that made the decision to dismantle the journalistic framework of Franco’s regime to facilitate the Transition and which culminated under the mandate of Felipe González (PSOE). After going through a series of phases in which there was no lack of affinity with the socialism prevailing in La Moncloa, the newspaper ALERTA reached its turning point with a strike in the 90s and the absolute control of the businessman Díaz Porras, who since then has been designing the editorial line.
The newspaper has gone through various changes in its editorial policy, linked in one way or another to the political vicissitudes of the successive governments of Cantabria. An example of this took place in 2011, when he published on the front page, in the middle of a day of reflection, an editorial in which he claimed that the leader of the PRC, Miguel Ángel Revilla, was a “comedy actor in show business,” after which he asked the vote for the PP. The regionalist appeal was archived by the Provincial Court without assessing whether or not there was an electoral crime. According to sources close to the PRC and PSOE at the time, the PP had “bought” the newspaper’s electoral information and that controversial cover.
That front page of the newspaper ALERTA caused a great stir in Cantabria. In addition to its content, dedicated entirely to discrediting the regionalist candidate, its design was also peculiar: there was only text, without photographs, and putting together the first letter of each paragraph, highlighted in capitular style, one could read: “Revilla no.”
Ciriaco Díaz Porras has had a leading role for other reasons, such as when he combined his position as president of the ALERT Council with the Presidency of the Caja Rural de Cantabria, an entity that was intervened by the Bank of Spain in one of the biggest financial scandals of the 80s, with a high volume of doubtful loans that had been destined for politicians and social organizations, and whose liquidation was finally carried out at the cost of a large outlay of public money.
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