The Catalan-language media in the Valencian Country after 40 years of the Law on the Use and Teaching of Valencian (LUEV)

Abstract

The framework of citizenship in the Statute of Autonomy and the Law on the Use and Teaching of Valencian (LUEV) have not managed to overcome centuries of Castilianisation in the media or to develop mass media in Catalan – from a Valencian standpoint – with large audiences that are suitable for articulating a collective identity rooted in the unique features of the Valencian Country.1 The Valencian media market in the Catalan language is characterised by an amalgam of small news media and specialised media with fragmented audiences, and although they have contributed to reviving the language, none of them has managed to attract a large audience. If we exclude À Punt, the presence of the media in Catalan is virtually imperceptible because most of them are local in scope. Nonetheless, the Catalan language media have experienced steady growth, increasing from 47 modest magazines in 1987 to 239 press, radio, TV and cybermedia outlets in 2023, but the Valencian Country has yet to articulate its own media market connected to the Catalan media space.