AP News, July 21st, 2007
Jesus de Polanco, a media giant credited with helping restore Spain's independent press after the death of dictator Gen. Francisco Franco in the 1970s, died Saturday at the age of 77, his flagship newspaper El Pais announced.
De Polanco, the billionaire chairman of the powerful Spanish media conglomerate Grupo PRISA and one of Spain's most influential people, died of an unspecified rheumatic disease, El Pais reported.
De Polanco co-founded El Pais and founded Grupo PRISA, which also owns radio and TV stations and publishing companies, and he was very close to the ruling Socialist Party. Grupo PRISA is the largest media company in the Spanish-speaking world, El Pais said.
El Pais, which launched in 1976, following Franco's 1975 death, quickly became Spain's most-read newspaper as the country returned to democracy. It remains its top-selling daily.
De Polanco ranked 287th on the Forbes list of the world's billionaires, published in March, with a net worth of $3 billion.
He was credited with transforming a company once composed only of El Pais into an international media conglomerate with extensive Latin American holdings.
Carmen Caffarel, president of the Cervantes Institute, a government agency that promotes Spanish culture, called de Polanco a seminal figure in post-Franco Spain.
His death, she said, is "an irretrievable loss for Spanish society, especially in the world of the media and culture."
Polanco also pioneered digital television in Spain.
Three of his four children from the first of his two marriages all hold senior posts in Grupo PRISA companies.
Earlier this year de Polanco designated his son Ignacio Polanco Moreno to succeed him as Grupo PRISA chairman.
