Background The need to inform public opinion of the government's action had its beginnings in 1918 with the creation of the
Ministry of Public Instruction and Fine Arts that had an Information Office. With the
dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, two successive organizations were created; first the Bureau for Information and Press Censorship, during the Military Directory (1923), and the next one in the Civil Directory (1925) with the Cabinet for Information and Press Censorship. During the
Second Republic, a Press Section was created in the General Secretariat of the
President of the Republic (1932) and already during the
Civil War, prime minister
Largo Caballero created the Ministry of Propaganda that had an ephemeral life.
Department The Department of Information and Tourism was created by a Decree-Law of 19 July 1951. The ministry assumed the competences over media and entertainment (
press,
cinematography and
theater and
broadcasting) that until then were attributed to the Undersecretariat of Popular Education, whose head was Manuel Arburúa de la Miyar, while those of tourism had been attributed to the Directorate-General for Tourism, whose director-general had been, since its creation in 1938 and for fifteen years,
Luis Bolín and that until then depended on the
Ministry of Home Affairs. Another of the bodies that came to depend on the ministry was the National Delegation of Press, Propaganda and Radio, a body that was in charge of the media controlled by the
Falange (such as the
Movement Press Group or the Network of Broadcasters of the Movement). The ministry was abolished during the
Spanish transition to democracy, assuming the
Office of the Spokesperson the powers relating to information, the
Ministry of Culture those about cultural affairs and the
Ministry of Trade those of tourism. The tourism powers are currently managed by the
Ministry of Industry and Tourism. ==List of ministers==