Spanish Best-Sellers

In recent years history has been good to the media and the publishing trade in Spain. Most weeks, there are two lengthy historical debates between Spanish and sometimes foreign historians on television, one of them often lasting up to three hours. Major historical documentary series, admittedly of varying quality, run to thirty and, on occasion, to fifty episodes. There are three national glossy popular historical magazines with healthy sales, six it you count the regions. The best of them is Historia 16, (from the publishing house that originally produced the pioneering Cambio 16 magazine of current affairs in the mid-1970s) which is both serious and entertaining, and very much the local equivalent of History Today on which it is partly modelled.