Jesús de Polanco, 77, Dies; Media Mogul Helped Revive Free Speech in Spain

Jesús de Polanco, 77, Dies; Media Mogul Helped Revive Free Speech in Spain
By VICTORIA BURNETT

MADRID, July 22 — Jesús de Polanco, a billionaire media entrepreneur viewed by Spaniards as crucial to restoring the free press during the country’s transition to democracy in the 1970s, died Saturday. He was 77.
Mr. de Polanco had been ill for some time, Grupo Prisa, the powerful media group he co-founded, said in a statement announcing his death on Saturday.
Mr. de Polanco, the chairman of Prisa, was one of the country’s most influential men and a close ally of the governing Socialist Party.
Also the co-founder of El País, the best-selling newspaper in the country, he was ranked 287th in March on the Forbes list of the richest people in the world, with a fortune worth $3 billion.
His burial on Sunday was attended by prominent cultural figures and senior politicians from the left and right, including Felipe González, the former Socialist prime minister, and José Saramago, the Portuguese Nobel Prize laureate, according to the radio station Cadena SER.
José Bono, a former defense minister, said that Mr. de Polanco’s media group “defended liberty during complicated times, and this is something that we Spaniards who fought against dictatorship cannot forget.”
Jesús de Polanco Gutiérrez was born in Madrid in 1929. Orphaned at a young age, he paid his way through school by selling books, and eventually earned a law degree.
He co-founded El País in 1976 as Spain emerged from the dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco, and helped build Prisa into a thriving publishing and broadcast empire.
Its holdings include newspapers, magazines, television and radio stations in Spain, as well as a clutch of radio stations in Latin America and a 15 percent stake in the French newspaper Le Monde.
“He has left behind the mark of a man of acute intelligence whose conviction contributed to the modernization of Spain,” Santiago de Ybarra y Churruca, president of a rival media group, Vocento S.A., wrote in the conservative newspaper ABC.
Though Mr. de Polanco vowed to stand up for the independence and integrity of the media, Prisa’s editorial line closely reflected that of the Socialist government, and rivals have charged that the group benefited from political favors.
Despite the kind of huge growth over the last three decades that sometimes leads families to step back from big companies, even with Mr. de Polanco’s death, his family will retain a strong presence in the company. Three of his four children are top executives at Prisa.
He will be succeeded as chairman of Prisa by its current vice president, his son Ignacio, 52.
His daughter Isabelle is the chief executive of the group’s educational publishing division Santillana; his son Manuel is the chief executive of its Portuguese media division; and his daughter María Jesús works on projects unrelated to the company.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company